Festival Comedy list.co.uk/festival
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332 TIM KEY Poetry corner gets kind of busy ●●●●●
Look behind you John Hegley, there’s a new comedy poet kid in town. With the limited Pleasance space Tim Key has at his disposal this year, he doesn’t get audience members up to do a Morris dance after having swapped their spectacles or some such capers, but there’s a similarity to the legendary Luton lyricist in the highly genial yet faintly menacing stage presence. During The Slutcracker, Key has surreal misadventures projected behind him while he stands on weighing scales, amid a floor strewn with everyday objects, their reason for being becoming (sort of) apparent at the freewheeling finale.
Key’s poems themselves are uniformly inventive if not hilarious across the board but he will always have a deft aside to chuck out that draws the laughter back in whenever it subsides. Somewhat intriguingly, Key has a master-servant banter going on with his two-baths-a-day sound guy Fletch, which isn’t a million miles away from the subservient sidekick role he once played to Alex Horne. History has repeated itself once and it’s likely to be replicated with a career in comedy as long as Mr Hegley’s. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 31 Aug, 9.50pm, £9.50–£10.50 (£8–£9).
SAMMY J: 1999 Swapping puppets for pubescence ●●●●● Melbourne’s smutty answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber returns with a tongue- in-cheek one-man musical set in the run-up to the millennium. With explicit
for GLASGOW COMEDY see page 27
references to the Y2K bug, Tamagotchis and Toy Story 2, he’s swapped puppeteer partner Heath McIvor (with whom he’s also appearing in Sammy J and the Forest of Dreams) with nostalgia for the relatively recent past. Playing his younger, geeky, schoolboy self, Sammy J presents an embellished account (one would hope) of how he came to feature on a late-90s ‘talent’ show, with the action flitting between the classroom and his bedroom.
Fraught with teen angst, Sammy J’s frenetic performance captures the audience’s attention but, with his oversized uniform and naturally rakish physique, is too convincing for comfort. With mimed clichés (such as the school bully being looked up to as implausibly tall) and the humour never transcending those classroom lows, it is too easy to believe that the whole show is being staged by an actual – admittedly talented – teenager. And the songs, again firmly rooted in
pubescence and straight out of the Disney school of musical storytelling, may begin to grate. (Mark Edmundson) ■ Underbelly, 0844 545 8252, until 30 Aug, 6pm, £9–£12 (£7.50–£11). ALISTAIR MCGOWAN Back to the 90s ●●●●●
Next to more recent TV impressionists such as Kevin Bishop and Peter Serafinowicz, Alistair McGowan is a positive veteran. Some 13 years after his last Edinburgh run, he proves that he’s still able to draw on his vast repertoire of voices to comic effect: look out for an alarmingly accurate Rowan Atkinson and an uncanny Nicolas Cage. However, he’s let down by the weakness of his material, which feels as though it’s been recycled from the last decade. Jokes about reality TV, the Beckhams, and a number of football references – some of which are only amusing if you’re familiar with the late-90s Celtic line-up – feature, though the appearance of Robert Peston provides a welcome contemporary injection.
Nevertheless, McGowan is a perceptive entertainer and he skilfully changes the direction of his act every time a gag works well, saving the biggest laughs for the end. That he recovers quickly after an audience member nearly faints in this stuffy venue is proof that he is a nimble performer. It’s just a shame that his skills aren’t backed by stronger stuff from his bulging catalogue. (Yasmin Sulaiman) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 31 Aug, 7.20pm, £14–£16 (£13–£15).
CHARLIE BAKER Schizophrenic jazz man should stick to one tune ●●●●●
IMPROV ROUND-UP Seasoned pros come up short in the improv game
As a genre, improvised comedy has an innate disposition to failed jokes and constant changes of direction, so if you’re after a belly-laugh you have to be prepared to keep up and gloss over the cracks. The best improv shows on the Fringe aren’t necessarily from the pros. Beg, borrow or steal a ticket to Paul Merton’s Impro Chums (●●●●● ) and you might find you're paying for the name rather than a comedic fortress. Showstopper! The Improvised Musical (●●●●●) is another high-octane act, but while the dancing is smooth and the musical repertoire extensive, they probably score lower on actual pizzazz and ability to dream up an unhackneyed storyline than the relatively unpolished Lights! Camera! Improvise! (●●●●● ), who manage to cobble together an extremely credible film in their 50 minutes. Of course, and as every impro compere will remind you, each day and
each show is different, and on this directive, it's possible that I just caught the Oxford Imps (●●●●●✉ on an off-day. It was, unfortunately, a horrendous one which resulted in them blowing the whistle and running off stage before any sense of closure had been reached. At times like that you start to long for a taut structure like that of The Noise Next Door (●●●●● ), whose extremely well thought-out central concept (to create a brand new world every night) leaves them plenty of space for controlled ingenuity and a genuinely enjoyable performance. The most receptive improv audiences are almost without exception those
of the further reaches of the evening. If you have a bent for geeky, gawky humour then several members of Shambles (●●●●● ) are really, genuinely funny. One of their viewers ended up with chest bare, posing as Jordan for holiday snaps. But then, it's only as fun as you, the audience, make it. (Lizzie Mitchell) ■ See list.co.uk/festival for full details.
He can sing (jazz), he can dance (his three stock moves can get you through any showtune choreography situation), he can squeeze his Jack Black-esque frame into revealing clothing and, most importantly, he can tell jokes. So why does Charlie Baker spend ten minutes of his 60 at the world’s best comedy showcase making the audience enact a Devonshire cattle market to no discernible comic effect? He starts strong with what becomes
a recurring theme, his all-pervasive ‘sponsor’, a website selling the Devon flag (it’s green with a black and white cross, vexillology fans). Observational gags and enthusiastic audience interaction soon gather pace and garner laughs. Then the agricultural interlude, along with bursts of songs from adverts and easy listening classics, appear as filler after half an hour of everything going swimmingly. By the ending, which features more larynx-busting comedy crooning, his cheeky chappie demeanour and easy rolling punchlines that enticed the audience from the start are not enough to keep them on his side. This Jack of all trades should stick to one. Hint: it’s not selling Devon flags. (Suzanne Black) ■ The Caves, 208 0882, until 30 Aug, 6.40pm, £8–£9 (£7–£8).
72 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 27 Aug–10 Sep 2009