FESTIVAL COMEDY REVIEWS
N A K U S L D
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I JOSIE LONG: ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE Newly acquired cynicism suits the amiable activist ●●●●●
Josie Long has turned 30, and it’s changed her – if her last show was full of wide-eyed idealism and exhortations to activism, she’s now become fully acquainted with disillusionment. And not just the kind when everything’s wrong and you don’t know what to do about it, but the worse kind when you’ve actually tried to do something and realised how futile/difficult that really is. A shift towards cynicism is for the good, though – providing a counterpoint to the bubbliness and irrepressible daft voices that are staples of Long’s comedy.
The goofy act can begin to grate (on climb- ing a mountain: ‘it was, like, proper high!!!’) when you know just how articulate and thoughtful she’s capable of being, and she has a habit of frequently squeezing a second, much cheaper laugh out of a decent joke, but there are plenty of moments of real hilarity in this show. Likely to appeal most to those who share her young, urban, liberal perspectives (in fact, if you fit that description you might feel she’s got you pegged a bit too well), it’s scarcely as revolutionary as she makes out, but lots of fun nonetheless. (Laura Ennor) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug (not 18, 19), 6pm, £11.50–£12.50 (£10.50–£11.50).
THE RETURN OF THE LUMBERJACKS Upbeat, enjoyable triple dose of Canadian humour ●●●●●
A slideshow reminds the entering audience of Canada’s illustrious contributions to the world – from Fay Wray to Hayden Christenson, Leonard Cohen to Chad Kroeger – before we’re introduced or re-acquainted with three more. National pride (yet self-deprecation) remains a theme throughout as Glenn Wool, Craig Campbell and Stewart Francis reprise a triple bill that first ran 15 years ago at the Stand. Campbell is on compère duties between his compatriots and a special guest: this time it’s the (non-Cana- dian) wrestler Mick Foley, who is unexpectedly a keen student of comedy and a Stewart Lee fan, but is not yet adept in its finer points and – perhaps unusually for him – speaking to a crowd that largely neither knows nor cares who he is. It’s a lull in an otherwise roundly enjoyable and upbeat hour-and-a-half of comedy from three very different performers.
Francis is the best known of the three, having made frequent TV appearances punting his deadpan one-
liners, at which it’s easy to find yourself laughing in spite of yourself, but whose fleeting nature can mean that momentum is lost as quickly as it builds. Slow-burning by comparison, Wool delivers observations that skip from the snide to the surreal in a laconic
stoner’s growl. After tackling swan courtship and giving kids coke (the non-trademarked, even-worse kind), he’s got some brilliant, edgy material lampooning the arbitrariness of organised religion, but there is a slight feeling that, after this strong point, he’s aimlessly filling his allotted time before handing back over to Campbell. Genial and energetic, Campbell is the perfect self-mocking, easygoing host. His amiable exchanges with the crowd are capable of drawing originality out of the usual ‘any [insert nationality here]s in the house’ pat- ter and his grizzly-bear physicality somehow adds to the nice-guy schtick, making him the most welcome returnee in this triumvirate of Canuck humour. (Laura Ennor) ■ Assembly Rooms, 0844 693 3008, until 26 Aug (not 13, 20), 8.10pm, £15 (£12).
SIMON MUNNERY: FYLM-MAKKER Technologically innovative stand-up ●●●●●
The Fringe veteran’s got a new gimmick this year and it’s a stroke of genius. With it Munnery’s man- aged to both undermine and accentuate the whole notion of stand-up comedy by abandoning the stage and substituting a live projection of himself on a screen where the mic-stand would usually be. Munnery himself sits among the audience perform- ing directly into a camera and the crowd looks at a grossly enlarged image of the comic’s face. The results are disconcerting: Munnery is at one step removed from his audience, and yet the blown-up close-up of his phizog makes his performance an extraordinarily intimate one.
Beyond this innovation, Munnery exploits the tech- nology at his fingertips by intercutting his sit-down routine with a series of amusing lo-fi paper and cardboard animations (or ‘fylms’) performed live on his lap and accompanied by songs. The technology occasionally flummoxes Munnery (though he makes a virtue of this), but it is, ultimately, the comedian’s winning brand of batty observations and daft jokes that carry the show. (Miles Fielder) ■ Stand, 558 7272, until 27 Aug, 6.20pm, £9–10 (£8–9).
MICHAEL DOWNEY: STANDING UP AGAIN Dry and wry comeback after serious road crash ●●●●● In 2002 when Downey was driving to Dublin for a gig he was involved in a head-on collision with another car. At the time he was a stand-up mak- ing his mark on the circuit, a regular at the Comedy Cellar in Dublin and he’d reached the final of the BBC New Comedy Award the previous year along- side Alan Carr. Seven-and-a-half years after the accident he made a return to stand-up and this is his first solo show. Given that he broke several bones in various places, suffered a head injury and was in a coma for ten days it’s a wonder that the only evidence of Downey’s accident that shows on stage is his very slightly impaired speech and occa- sional moments of amnesia. One thing’s for certain, he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. It’s with a wry and dry wit that he relates the story of his somewhat put-upon girlfriend, shows clips of himself before the accident and describes his relief that he hadn’t turned out to be a vegetable after all: ‘I didn’t like vegetables.’ (Marissa Burgess) ■ Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, until 26 Aug (not 20), 7.45pm, £8–£9 (£7–£8).
42 THE LIST 16–23 Aug 2012