list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL COMEDY
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BRETT GOLDSTEIN: BURNING MAN Finding purpose in the flawed and absurd: with glow-sticks ●●●●●
TOBIAS PERSSON AND THE DRIVEL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Strong punchlines in a show about our increasingly trivial civilisation ●●●●● PIPPA EVANS: THERE ARE NO GUILTY PLEASURES Songs and banter about the things we love but really shouldn’t ●●●●●
When Brett Goldstein enters, throwing shapes and wearing glow-sticks, you could be forgiven for getting the wrong idea about Burning Man. The explanation – ‘I don’t know how to start a comedy show’ – encapsulates the beautiful and purposeful absurdity of a show with an uncommon desire to navigate all the ridiculousness life can throw at you with clear thinking, an open mind and an absolutely winning generosity. Alongside painfully funny and brilliantly creative material, Burning Man has more thought and nuance in one hour than some comics’ entire careers.
In some ways, the show is a single completed thought, dragged through a startling sequence of narrative turns that include psychoactive drugs, sexual overshare, pre-adolescent existentialism and the desert festival of the title.
For all its strange and surprising meanders,
Burning Man manages to make perfect sense. Goldstein is an immaculate performer, a generous, warm and self-critical comic with a talent for finding sense and purpose in the flawed and the absurd. (Dave Coates) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 31 Aug (not 17), 9.30pm, £9.50–£11 (£8–£10).
‘It’s very hard to change the world on your own,’ muses Sweden’s Tobias Persson as he tackles society’s growing fight for ‘drivel rights’. This obsession with everyday trivialities over the bigger picture ‘reduces human struggle to soundbites and world events to hashtags’. Man, these Scandinavians really do speak better English than we do. With an amiable demeanour, Persson delivers
strong punchlines and impressive off-the-cuff punning (outside his native language: cap doffed) to satirise our dissatisfaction with the more-than- satisfactory and our so-called right to be offended at everything and everyone.
He jokes that as he wouldn’t be much of an
opponent in a physical fight, his we apon instead is words. But the mic can be mightier than the sword. One audience member leaves after ten minutes, complaining of being ‘a bit bored’, but it’s a foolish decision. While not every joke lands, hanging out in the company of this comedian seems like a sensible move. (Emma Newlands) ■ The Stand 6, 558 7272, until 30 Aug (not 17), 12.20pm, £10 (£8).
To many comedy fans, Pippa Evans is best known as Loretta Maine, the mascara-streaked, Courtney Love-esque rock-country chanteuse with a song in her heart and bitterness embedded deep in her soul. She doesn’t quite bound on stage proclaiming ‘and this is me!’ but Evans is keen to show Fringe audiences another side to her many talents. Many of her top moments come from bawdy chit-
chat to the males among her gathering, whether they are young actors or hair-thinning gents, and she bravely ploughs on against the distracting presence of Amelia, an audience member with the most over-the-top laugh in showbusiness history.
She unleashes scorn upon modern go-to targets such as Katie Hopkins and beany-hatted singer- songwriters, while tunes dissect the structure of country songs and the perils of being on a TV panel show. We could probably live without the centuries- old idea that the Welsh accent is perilously close to something a little more Asian but the unsheathed joy which Evans brings to a room allows you to forgive her almost anything. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Bannermans, 226 0000, until 29 Aug (not 17, 24), 1.45pm, free.
ZOE COOMBS MARR: DAVE A highly accomplished hour which potently attacks misogyny and bad comedy ●●●●●
With her hair tied back in a ponytail and a drawn-on monobrow and beard, Zoe Coombs Marr somehow passes uncannily for the character she inhabits for the whole show. Dave is every liberal audience’s worst nightmare: a beer-swilling misogynistic Australian with six minutes of material at best and no self-awareness. A larger than life stereotype of the kind of comedy dinosaur that we associate with the 1970s but whose descendants currently litter TV panel shows.
The cognitive dissonance arising from simultaneously watching
Dave fumble through a bigoted gag and Zoe expertly portray a character who is ironically telling that gag is interesting. Dave’s jokes are patently unfunny. The distance created by Zoe telling that joke does not make it funny, even as a guilty pleasure. Rather, Dave himself is the target of ridicule, his lack of self- awareness reinforced by Marr’s in her knowing portrayal of Dave’s ilk and as a woman on stage delivering lads-only banter. Not content with her excoriating depiction of a woman-hating Aussie comic, her lampooning takes in the wider target of all bad stand-ups. She takes to task those staples like banter with the audience and local humour. And there’s a moment of genius with microphone stands.
By setting up Dave to fail on his own terms Marr is able to tackle feminist issues in comedy as well as the depiction and treatment of women in the world at large without once mentioning the word feminism. Very talented and extremely clever, Zoe Combs Marr offers a political show that avoids didacticism, in the end sacrificing trite conclusions and neat parallels for comedy. (Suzanne Black) ■ Underbelly Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, until 30 Aug (not 18), 9.20pm, £9–£11 (£8–£10).
13–20 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 53