FESTIVAL COMEDY REVIEWS
JIGSAW Piecing together some top sketches ●●●●● After a successful Fringe debut last year, the troupe return with another offering of what has to be one of the fastest-paced sketch shows about. Some skits last less than a minute before we’re plunged into the next. Stand-ups Dan Antopolski (the veteran as well as the absurdist of the group), Nat Luurtsema and Tom Craine combine perfectly to produce a thor- oughly enjoyable hour of energy and invention. The predominant attributes here are a strong sense of the silly – there’s much running away backstage with arms in the air — plus plenty of toilet humour with the show owning more than its fair share of references to shit, cocks and semen. In anyone else’s hands (pardon the imagery) that could be a bad thing, but in theirs the ideas are so off-the- wall and delivered with such vigour that it all feels incredibly fresh and innovative. (Marissa Burgess) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug, 4.45pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8).
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I LATE NIGHT GIMP FIGHT Risible, regrettable and rotten ●●●●●
Where to begin? Firstly, perhaps the lads behind Late Night Gimp Fight deserve some praise for sheer audacity. Not sure who thought they would regularly cram people into a venue the size of Pleasance Forth but it’s barely half-full on a night when not even the Olympics could be blamed.
Opening with a series of projected negative press quotes from 2011, you feel certain that they’ll
confound the critics with some barnstorming material. If getting hold of footage of famous movies and iconic pop videos (‘Thriller’, ‘Vogue’) into which a Gimp is inserted à la Zelig is deemed cutting edge these days, then we’re all thoroughly doomed. ‘Now time for an inevitably weaker punchline’ also flashes up in massive letters, which seems to
suggest that the sketches are of a varying quality, when dire seems to be the default setting. Still, if your idea of a strong punchline is someone having a bottle inserted into their anus, then you might have a whale of a time. Actually that might make the routine sound hugely offensive when dull and pointless are more appropriate adjectives. One scene perhaps sums up the Gimps’ failings: there’s a nice opening to a Scooby-Doo sketch which fuses the actors’ running with the animation behind them but once they open their mouths to give us the dialogue that’s presumably been sweated over for months, it all goes to pot. As for the sequence when a front row guy is dragged up to be serenaded with accusations of
paedophilia, the mind utterly boggles at the sheer invention at play here. In the Gimps’ opening tune, they promise that the audience will feel ‘dirty and used’. Bored and desperate for an hour’s comedy that hasn’t had its brains kicked out is more like it. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 27 Aug, 10pm, £12.50–£14 (£11–£12.50).
GUARDIAN READER Liberal leftie humour ●●●●●
The anonymous reader is a tall, lanky, floppy-haired, bearded, liberal, leftie, upper-middle class intellectual and former teacher. In other words, he’s the arche- typal reader of the newspaper affectionately known as The Grauniad. Having become all too aware of the shortcomings of taking a paper that preaches to the converted, and appalled by his mother’s sub- scription to its antithesis, The Daily Mail, our hero tries to remove himself from his snug, smug comfort zone by seeking some alternate points of view. Unsurprisingly, Guardian Reader can’t bring him- self to embrace them. But then, the set-up of the show is simply a jumping-off point for various mus- ings about the state of the nation, the British media, our political elite and newspaper headline topics such as the London riots. The concept of the show gets lost in all this, but it doesn’t matter in the end because our reader’s observations are constantly funny and consistently on the mark. One thing: William Hammer-Lloyd ought to put his name in the title of his show; he’s good enough not to remain so anonymous. (Miles Fielder) ■ The Caves, 556 5375, until 26 Aug, 11.45pm, £8–£9 (£7–£8).
IAIN STIRLING Always looking for the missing link ●●●●●
Relying primarily on his deep charm, wicked sense of humour and red-hot wit, Iain Stirling possesses all of the born-with-it-or-you’re-not qualities associated with the world’s leading comics. Material in Happy to be the Clown? moves from his mum’s Facebook page to Masterchef and train toilets, often with tenu- ous links, or occasionally no link at all. During such moments, the comedian merely giggles and looks at the audience before admitting, ‘I really just haven’t written a link for this bit yet.’ As a 24-year-old, Stirling’s material will perhaps chime best with a younger demographic. Perhaps most impressive is his ability to tie it all together, making regular reference to topics previously cov- ered, something he clearly recognises himself: ‘That is a great link, you have no idea how long it took me to come up with that one.’ (Jamie Cameron) ■ Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0844 545 8252, until 26 Aug, 9.40pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8).
110 THE LIST 23 Aug–20 Sep 2012