FESTIVAL COMEDY | Reviews
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OLGA KOCH: FIGHT Telling a crazy true story that barely requires embellishment ●●●●●
Russian-American twentysomething comic Olga Koch occupies a pretty unique spot for taking a quick look back at Russia’s history. Born in the year Boris Yeltsin was elected, this confident millennial in a jazzy purple shellsuit traces her parents’ love story, her motherland’s transition from the Soviet regime into capitalism and her own recent rise to fame. She describes her dad’s wooing of her mum, then shows a bunch of 90s home videos of her family fooling around, before dropping in the fact that her dad became Russia’s deputy prime minister. After being vilified for failing to distribute the country’s wealth evenly, he then became a game-show host, and is now living in exile in Germany since being mysteriously stopped at Moscow airport a few years ago: hearing his strange-but-true story is worth the ticket price alone.
The vintage clips of pro-Gorbachev TV adverts for Pizza Hut are absolute gold, as Koch describes a country trying to quickly get onboard with brand advertising and Western culture, just as she was developing her own crushes on boys and Chicago Bulls basketball merch.
Koch is clearly trying to figure out where she fits in to all of this bizarre back story, and finishes with a musical finale about her love of dating younger boys. She forces herself too much into the limelight a few times (her used-tampon business idea probably won’t make her a mint), but the photos of her posing dramatically as a kid do work pretty well, as she sweetly admits with a shrug that she’s always been a bit of a show-off. Naturally comfortable onstage, Koch burns brightest when she’s not trying too hard and is just telling it straight about her own family, and her country’s often ludicrous journey to the present day. (Claire Sawers) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, until 26 Aug, 7.15pm, £7–£9 (£6.50–£8).
ROB KEMP: WHEEL OF SHOWS Disappointing follow-up to a cult hit ●●●●●
Proclaiming that he is defiantly neither a musical comedian nor ‘that film guy’, Rob Kemp’s new show sheds little light on what he actually is. Having ripped up last year’s Fringe with the cult late-night hit of The Elvis Dead (in which he energetically performed Presley classics which he’d rewritten to fit with scenes from Evil Dead 2 which played on a screen behind him), it’s clear that he was at a loss about what to do next. Deciding that the best option available was to do a follow-up show about doing a follow-up show, this meta affair (with strong hints that he’s been watching a lot of Stewart Lee lately) regrettably doesn’t amount to a great deal.
Dressed in a black and white suit (which might make you think of the prisoner outfits from olden times), he begins by misremembering the events of last August and later recalls a dream he had featuring the likes of Vanilla Ice and Bruce Hornsby which reveals his fear of being a similar one-hit wonder. Admitting to having made a ‘terrible mistake’ and
later screaming ‘I’ve got nothing!’ as a defence for the lightweight hour he’s put together here, it’s difficult not to nod sadly in agreement. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Monkey Barrel, until 26 Aug, 1.15pm, £5 in advance or donations at the venue.
50 THE LIST FESTIVAL 15–27 Aug 2018
SEYMOUR MACE GETS SUCKED OFF BY GOD A ramshackle hour with a little bit of quantum physics ●●●●● OWEN ROBERTS: I LET A SIX-YEAR-OLD WRITE MY SHOW Wild and surreal frontiers of a child’s mind ●●●●●
‘I’m known for being a bit mad,’ explains Seymour Mace shortly into his show, surprising precisely no one in the room. Claiming to be unable to perform anything so banal as regular observational material, the former Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee is a surreal oddball blessed with a wonderfully off- kilter worldview. He claims to have come up with his show’s provocative title in order to sell tickets but then, incredibly, he goes on to explain how it’s possible to extract a literal meaning from it based on a mixture of quantum physics, theology and oral sex.
Mace’s imagination runs riot throughout his hour, although some sections are certainly more focused than others. A scene in which he lip-syncs to Radio 4 falls a bit flat when the live broadcast happens to be an uninspiring news interview about corporation tax (he claims that it works best during the week, when The Archers is on). But Mace’s short attention span rarely settles on
anything for too long and he quickly flits between distractions. This unpredictable show is imaginative, ramshackle and bit of a mixed bag, but Seymour Mace himself is great fun to be around. (Murray Robertson) ■ The Stand 3, until 26 Aug, 1.30pm, £12 (£10).
Owen Roberts stands on stage as Shrek’s Lord Farquaad, dressed like a chicken. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he cries. ‘You’ve paid good money to watch a grown man shitting eggs!’ This isn’t Roberts’ show, really, having been scripted by his girlfriend’s six-year- old daughter as the result of an amusing quid pro quo, the gist of which is ‘I’ll help you with your homework if you write my Edinburgh show’. Kids write the best jokes and – judging by his contributions to Isabella’s education – he got the better deal. Roberts presents a charming hour of comedy about the wonders of a young and vivid imagination, with all its bizarre frontiers. Putting his art in the hands of a child means punchlines and coherent set-ups go out the window. In their place, the wonderfully nonsensical tale of Boss Stern and the Clumsy Police is told. Roberts is faithful to the source material, which is piped over the sound system, a bossy reminder to stick to the script, please. This is a touching performance about love and family, and although the show’s repetitive nature becomes apparent at the halfway stage, it’s all tied up in a i rst-rate i nale. (Craig Angus) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, until 27 Aug, 4.45pm, £8–£10 (£7–£9).