Festival Comedy
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332 KATE FOX A slow news day ●●●●●
successful ones are deliciously surreal, particularly Hannah Dodd’s drawn-out monologues intricately detailing what she almost did, while the secret millionaire whose reward comes steeped in conditions and an Asda employee cult induction ceremony are a little less flighty but very well-crafted. But most of the sketches feel
undeveloped and this is compounded by the rapid switch around. It’s so quick that several skits segue before the obsolete performers have made it off the stage. There are also a couple of poor routines which are ill-advisedly repeated. The
success of one such gag rests entirely on a toy helicopter prop, the
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skilful piloting of which so mesmerised the audience that the joke itself was lost. Twice. There’s great chemistry and much potential, if only these girls could apply a little patience. (Murray Robertson) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 30 Aug (not 16), 6.20pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8). Online Booking Fringe www.edfringe.com International Festival www.eif.co.uk Book Festival www.edbookfest.co.uk Art Festival www.edinburghartfestival.org
Comic poet and newshound Kate Fox sure knows how to sell a story. Her true-life rhymes are plotted out through a series of quirky, attention- grabbing hooks in her show, Kate Fox News: she absconded with a gun-runner, was a gangster’s moll and contemplated selling her womb. These snappy ‘headlines’, however, are made flesh in a fairly arduous manner. There’s no doubt Bradford- born Fox had a difficult upbringing, but her potentially moving and amusing tales of paternal deception, wife-swapping parents and television’s nigh-Godlike presence feel empty.
Many of her observations are tired: a riff on how we adapt to suit our names struggles for impact (Fox herself was previously Gaunt and then Herd: she finds irony in both), while her variation on the ‘Master of the West Kent Hunt’ spoonerism is now pretty ubiquitous. A friendly orator and a celebrated poet – she regularly features on Radio 4 and pens parodic news-related odes – Fox’s lyrical confessionals and her thoughts on current affairs as man-made assemblage, are far from headline- grabbing. (Nicola Meighan) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 30 Aug (not 16), 12.15pm, £8–£9 (£7–£8).
LADY GARDEN Slightly too fast-paced sketch show ●●●●● Despite their immaturely provocative title, Lady Garden is six inoffensive Manchester University alumni returning for their third Fringe. After a disarming and slightly discombobulating false start, we’re whisked off at a fair old pace through a series of sketches. The more
NEXT ISSUE OUT WEDNESDAY 18 AUGUST 42 THE LIST 12–19 Aug 2010
RICHARD HERRING A disappointing retread of past glories ●●●●●
With last year’s show, Hitler Moustache, Richard Herring created a genuinely moving and highly provocative tract about racism, identity and the power of iconography. On the back of an unseemly pre- festival row with The Guardian, he appeared to have his dander up and anger became a fruitful energy for Herring. To bolster the effect of that show, he grew a bona fide toothbrush mouser (as seen in the films of Charlie Chaplin and Leni Riefenstahl) and, apart from the long hair and baggy suit, looked exactly like Adolf Hitler. Or the little tramp, perhaps depending on your particular worldview.
This time around, the hair’s even lanker and, guess what, he looks an awful lot like Jesus of Nazareth. So, there’s a great excuse for him to dip into his own archive and revisit his 2001 Fringe show Christ on a Bike. For
Herring, this was a significant moment as it marked his first major foray onto the solo comedy stage and has ultimately acted as the springboard to the hard-earned reputation he has today, a status which, as he stated last week, has finally landed him a room with chandeliers. But, for all the splendid punning and cavorting around
certain daft passages in the Bible – mainly the tedious opening page which would have had publishers demanding a rewrite and the often overlooked bizarre nature of The Ten Commandments – this feels like a stepping stone towards another bigger and better work. For this fan, the saddest indictment of a disappointing show is that the greatest excitement of the evening arrived on flicking through Herring’s by- now annual and very generous programme and seeing a full-page ad for the October DVD release of Hitler’s Moustache. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Assembly Rooms, 623 3030, until 30 Aug, 9.45pm, £9.50–£11 (£8–£8.50).