FESTIVAL COMEDY REVIEWS
SHAPPI KHORSANDI Consummate if conventional comedy ●●●●●
From the outset, the Iranian comedian has the crowd in the palm of her hand. Shappi Khorsandi is confident and charming and cute, and she seems to know just how far to push the lewd jokes. And the large audience, that’s mainly made up of an elderly coach party, lap it up. Khorsandi’s new show, Dirty Tricks and
Hopscotch, revolves around an affair she had with an unnamed rock star after she split up with her husband. By Khorsandi’s account, this older Yorkshireman (who’s mates with Chris and Gwyneth), mucked her about something terrible. But he also opened her eyes a bit in the bedroom, and so she at least feels she took something away from the short-lived relationship. There’s no denying this is consummately delivered comedy, but it’s also pretty safe stuff. And it doesn’t overly convince. It doesn’t matter whether or not there really was a rock star, but it does matter that this ever so risqué tale feels just a bit too calculated to please. (Miles Fielder) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 26 Aug, 8.30pm, £11–£12 (£9.50–£10.50).
CARIAD LLOYD Turbo-charged freewheeling character comedy ●●●●●
Last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nominee returns with that ‘difficult second show’ (her words) which, as it turns out, gets off to a wobbly start but ends with the kind of big bang that leaves one wanting to see a lot more of this wildly talented little firecracker. Cariad Lloyd opens her return engagement at the Fringe with a pretty funny riff on Bob Dylan’s well-known song-lyrics- scrawled-on-white-boards routine.
Thereafter, she sets up the rest of the show by informing the audience that she’s been mis-listed in the official Fringe programme under comedy when what she really wants to do is perform some theatre. The intervention of an officious Fringe official, however, forces Lloyd to play her show for laughs and so she presents a serious of sketches featuring various comic characters. None of this is ever less than amusing, but the show is a bit messy until she settles into playing
her comic creations, among them a foul-mouthed singing cockney, a Scandinavian homicide detec- tive and versions of the actresses Katharine Hepburn and Zooey Deschanel. These vignettes are real mash-ups. Her Hepburn, for example, is cast as a supermarket employee in a skit told in the style of a film noir. What they allow Lloyd to do is take off on a series of stream-of-consciousness rants that prove to be absolutely hilarious and at once really quite difficult to keep up with. It’s as though Lloyd suddenly hit the comedy turbo-charge button and left the audience standing. In that mode, Lloyd’s line delivery and train of thought is super-fast and utterly unpredictable while her demeanour switches, disarmingly, from charming to psychotic and back again. A full hour of this might be too much. It also could have been a perfect show. (Miles Fielder) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug, 4.45pm, £9–10 (£8–£9).
RHYS DARBY Conchords star makes stratospheric rise ●●●●●
It’s likely that Rhys Darby has been able to fill this very large venue thanks to his success as hap- less band manager Murray Hewitt on Flight of the Conchords. But he proves in This Way to Spaceship that he’s much more than Murray, though he throws out a couple of funny references to the TV show that’s made him famous.
The title of the show is also the name of the Kiwi comic’s first book, an ‘autobiographical space novel’, and this set is based on the same material. He wakes up in the belly of a spaceship, flanked by some impressive robots, and tries to remember how he got there. It’s a loose frame – only a small pro- portion of the jokes are space-related – but a tightly- structured, well-written show. Some punchlines take a while to set up but Darby is in his element when he’s performing characters and sound effects. There’s some memorable idiotic dancing to ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’, and with his big finale, Darby draws in his show’s many tentacles with true professionalism and effortless charm. (Yasmin Sulaiman) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug, 8pm, £17.50–£18.50 (£16–£17.50).
SEAN HUGHES Where silly meets serious ●●●●●
It’s been noted in previous years that there are a lot of dad-dying shows about. But it’s one of those big life events, so why wouldn’t you write a show about it? Sean Hughes’ father died of cancer last year, but what this show certainly isn’t is some kind of introspective therapy session. While remaining a fit- ting tribute to the relationship he had with his father, Hughes swiftly and seamlessly alternates between pathos and gags. One minute he’s criticising the availability of cancer drugs, the next he’s making a suggestion to jolly up the signing of the death certifi- cate with a big yellow pencil.
As he recounts growing up in a working-class family in Dublin, he’ll be wearing silly trousers and introducing a plethora of cuddly puppets. There’s even a bit of Snow Patrol in case you thought he wasn’t taking it seriously enough. Somehow it all blends together in a show that is as knockabout as it is emotional, which pretty much sums up life too. (Marissa Burgess) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug, 5.30pm, £13–£14 (£11.50–£13).
34 THE LIST 16–23 Aug 2012