Comedy/Comedy Reviews

Sketchatron Review
Sketch-comedy gets a rough deal. With no acts of this genre nominated for the If.comedy awards, and ...
School Of Comedy Review
Kids swearing! And performing rude jokes! Thankfully, the pupils within The School of Comedy far exc...
Will & Greg Review
Impressively charming duo Will & Greg (half of last year's Ugly Kid) have created another success wi...
Clever Peter Review
The press release and image for Clever Peter indicate that this group used to be a quartet. The depa...
P.I.E. Review
What would Jessica do? ask Emma Bettridge and Liz Hague in reference to Murder She Wrote hero Jessic...
Barbershopera! Review
There is a sense in which a performance with a high risk-factor, such as acapella close harmony sing...
Gamarjobat Review
Complete with pink and blond mohicans, the well known faces of Japanese comedy duo Gamarjobat are ba...



Richard Sandling Review
  1. Geeky can be endearing but Sandling misses the mark and his show is uncomfortable, lacking in structure, and decidedly lacking in laughs. He ponders whether this third part of his VHS trilogy will be ...
The Third Condiment Review
  1. The stage, as it appears before the start of The Third Condiment, gives audiences a good idea of what to expect. Three bean bag chairs rest on the floor while behind them on a small ikea table sit an ...
The Reduced Edinburgh Impro Show Review
  1. Playing in the darkness of the Pleasance Courtyard Cavern, the Reduced Edinburgh Impro Show, are marking themselves out as one of the best improvised comedy groups at this years festival. The premi...
Deborah Frances-White Review
  1. Deborah Frances- White new offering this year teaches us how to attract the opposite sex, in a highly amusing show which combines stand up with a masterclass in the rules of flirtation. The performer ...
Mark Watson Review
  1. Mark Watson's 2007 show, Can I Briefly Talk To You About The Point Of Life?, was one of the best shows I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Starting from within the audience and charming the 300 stro...
  1. ‘It's a book reading' Hall explains to a slightly bemused audience. I thought I came here for stand-up. Rich Hall, it appears, is feeling a pang of ‘comedic pressure' in his life, and find...
  1. Having never been on one of Edinburgh's Tour buses it's hard to tell how interesting they'd be - and how quickly the idea of an open-top bus on the East coast of Scotland would be exposed as lunacy. P...
  1. It's a sign of a burgeoning genre that the Shrimps use the abbreviated ‘Improv' in their title, safe in the knowledge that they will be understood by a public increasingly aware of the comedy fo...
  1. Few comedians can exude the wit and charm of Clive James. In his typically laid back fashion (and M&S stylish ensemble) we are guided through his thoughts about a variety of subjects; from the Olympic...
  1. Felix promises to stick to what he knows. What he knows is middle-of-the-road comedy for middle-aged people, by a middle-of-the-road-and-middle-aged man. Never edgy or interesting, he skirts over stab...
  1. Slick and stylish sketch-comedy troupe Idiots Of Ants (marvellous pun intended) return to Edinburgh fresh from a string of TV appearances including the best sketch about Facebook you're likely to see....
  1. Exuding charm and with an abundance of charisma, Tom Allen is our host for an hour of storytelling. His relaxed and inoffensive delivery is certainly a brilliant remedy to the abundance of abrasive co...
  1. Whew! Russell Howard's chatty laugh extravaganza is absolutely exhausting, in a good way. He's scarily at ease as he tirelessly zig-zags his audience in a rollercoaster of random tales, interupting th...
  1. Being a keen historian, and alleged descendent of James Watt, Andrew O'Neill's Totally Spot on History of Britain held great promise for your reviewer. Unfortunately the show served as a good warning:...
  1. Special School, hats on jam jars and sneezing during oral sex: Fabbri's material is a lot of things, but it is not intelligent. This is one of the main ideas in a show exploring stupidity. Why is it, ...
  1. It must be daunting for rehearsed acts to see this show and be confronted with the sheer energy and imagination produced with such finesse by an improvised show, made up on the spot night after night....
  1. If.comedy's 2007 winner Brendon Burns returns to Edinburgh and the gentile surroundings of the Assembly Rooms with a show that features a pointless and overblown beginning like no other you're likely ...
  1. It has become rather du jour for comedians to integrate video footage into their shows. At times, this can create very funny and clever moments (see Idiots of Ants or Glen Wool) but Pam Ann takes this...
  1. Leaving the Pleasance Courtyard and being taken to an underwhelmingly sterile conference centre down the road does not normally make for a promising start to a show. Luckily, what awaits the small aud...
  1. A high-octane, snappy hour of sketches all taking place in the same hotel room, this show restored my faith in the genre after having seen several disappointing attempts elsewhere. Four young men play...
  1. What a shame if you went to this show under any misapprehension that it had anything at all to do with the celebrated film and TV show. Apart from the choice of name for ‘Hotlips', the missing f...
  1. Comedians often strut around the Fringe being offensive for the sake of it. Much of the time this provokes an audience reaction funnier than the actual joke, or simply grabs a headline. Thankfully Nic...
  1. Saunders is now a celebrity – he played on Sky Poker this year and almost won. He uses this as the start of his show, mentions the lump on his testicle that made him feel a little too aware of h...
  1. So energetic he's exhausting to watch, Monahan is a confident – to the point of being cocky – performer. He rushes onstage giving high-fives left, right and centre and looks like the cat t...
  1. Rarely do the titles of comedy shows correspond in anyway with their content. It is rarer still to have a comedian that has not only done his research, but has helpfully provided us with a bibliograph...
  1. Saturday night telly is all about fairly bland, family-friendly, safe entertainment, so you would expect a similar style of fun from one of its newest and biggest stars. Omid Djalili doesn't disappoin...
  1. All eight performers in The Oxford Imps come across as intelligent, likeable and competent. They also possess the hallmark quality of good improvised comedy troupes – that of being highly energi...
  1. Eric Koller's claim to be “like Mr Bean on acid” should serve sufficiently to warn most away from his comedy. However, those who venture into the Hill Street Theatre undaunted will be gree...
  1. Like most poets John Hegley begins at I. In the case of the Luton bard though, this signals not introspection, but a continuation of the ‘animal alphabet' left unfinished from last year. Marc...
  1. A comedy show is something that can sometimes make you uncomfortable-either because the comedian is causing you to feel this way on purpose or for the silent moments when you know they're struggling f...
  1. Given the production line nature of the fringe, it's pretty normal to find comedians introducing themselves. What's not usual however, is for a comic to present an introduction in the third person so ...
  1. Sit back, relax, don't be afraid, Simpy Fancy is going to whisk you away from its tiny, stifling venue to a magical land where brothers and sisters have psychic connections, time occasionally runs bac...
  1. A tragic quality surrounds clowns and supply teachers everywhere. Both put careers on the line in front of often tired, uninterested audiences, and attempt to entertain/teach. Luke Toulson, himself a ...
  1. If you're in a really daft mood then perhaps this show will be more your cup of tea than it was mine. Two women cavort about telling the tale of D'Artagnan's first liaisons with the other musketeers. ...
  1. Lady Garden is a great, light-hearted way to pass an hour or so during this unusually scorched Sunday afternoon. The six young ladies that make up Lady Garden are full of a risqué wit that manages to ...
  1. A rather stuttery start finds Matt Kirshen relying on all too familiar jokes about how young he looks – shtick which, after a few years on the stand-up circuit, he should have moved past. As he ...
  1. Is it OK to do an extended, stereotypical Japanese impression? This is not, unfortunately, the question that Sara Standring wants us to consider. It was, however, the only thing running through my min...
  1. Heavily scripted and awkward, this show was a self-indulgent excuse for a B-list celebrity to show off. As she rambled on about her life, she would sporadically leap backstage, grab a pointless prop a...
  1. Twisted country and western music with a hysterically deadpan, longhaired cowboy, Wilson Dixon's show is one not to miss. He sings about life – it's like “a salmon swimming upstream: hard ...
  1. A woman who would ‘rather eat a Toblerone than have sex', Fiona O'Loughlin captures the look of despair in the eyes of many mothers above a certain age. Listening to her rant about her giant Cat...
  1. Very, very funny is one way to describe this show. Exhausting is another. Just watching Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert rant his way through the various topics that incite his righteous indignation is a k...
  1. By the end of her show, every audience member either wanted to marry Maeve Higgins or, at the very least, wanted to be in her kitchen stroking her cat and eating her home-made cake. She's an endearing...
  1. It's hard to know what to make of Scott Capurro. He's trying so very hard to offend you that it seems almost churlish not to oblige him. Certainly he has more walk-outs than any other comedian I've ev...
  1. Following last year's successful ‘Birdwatching', likeable comic Alex Horne turns his attention to all things neological in what he's inventively termed ‘Wordwatching'. His plan is to come ...
  1. We continue, like moths to the flame, to be drawn to celebrity names in lights. This is maintained by giant reality TV factories, producing pre-packaged glitterati and whisking them onto the covers gl...
  1. It is true, Juliet Meyers does have strange ears: there's a little, natural hole in the cartilage hidden behind her unruly mop of curls. Her claim to fame was made even more unimpressive than it might...
  1. A bizarre and complicated insight into the minds of two severely funny men, The Pajama Men had the audience guffawing, making silly noises and staring with bewilderment at what unfurled before them. T...
  1. Jeff Kreisler looks a little tired and confused. Playing to a half full meeting room in the basement of Edinburgh Police Club (functioning presently as Stand 4) he'd be forgiven a slight feeling of be...
  1. Olivia Neville didn't make me laugh – in fact she made me want to cry. Or even give her a hug during this 40 minute mess. Obviously a very talented actress, with fantastic characterisation and d...
  1. Featuring the grand comedy of spelling success “SUCKSESS” as well as someone who looks a tiny bit like Madonna makes for a weak show. Unfortunately these were the highpoints of The Guru, a...
  1. For those of you who don't know what a Behemoth is, it is a large monster mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Not that there's any need to know that, but it sets the tone of a show tows the line between co...
  1. Ciaron and Owen get naked on stage: shock horror! Luckily though, the humour of the show far surpasses the cheap gimmick of full-frontal nudity. The show centres on the internal monologues of these tw...
  1. Danny Robins has a theory: The proliferation of music festivals over the past couple of years has been so rapid that, on current trend, we will all have our own personal Glastonbury some time in the v...
  1. The fringe is full of angry comics. Enraged yet still eloquent stand-ups however, are more of a rarity. Andrew Lawrence should be congratulated on holding firm a position in the latter ranks. After...
  1. As Luke Wright steps onto the stage you'd be forgiven for thinking you were about to witness an hour of blabbering from a particularly cocksure adolescent. A baby face, a smart fitted suit and an enth...
  1. Lucy Porter is feeling cheerful. Pretty, petite, barefoot, she pads about in front of a backdrop of kittens and ducks, promising a ‘happy show'. It is that – she barely breaks her smile in...
  1. Two Germans, an Arab and a black guy walk into a comedy venue. A Jewish comedian, Lewis Schaffer, welcomes them and invites the Germans to the first row; they oblige. The comedian proceeds to fire off...
  1. Jarlath Regan is a likeable enough fellow who has a cheery outlook on life and plods along trying to offend as few people as possible. Nice, he certainly is but...funny? He has always backed his way o...
  1. There is no doubt that Tom Wrigglesworth is a likeable chap. He greets the audience quite comfortably as we file in, making little comments and strumming a guitar. It's a lovely way to start a show, a...
  1. Encouraging an audience to sing along to power rock ballads as they enter a venue must be a sure fire way of getting people on-side. It also served as warm up before our musical slating of Tom ‘...
  1. On face value the idea of a camp, Glaswegian comedian, in a trademark leather kilt seems an irresistible combination. Yet much to my disappointment this luke warm performance failed to reach any expec...
  1. Comedians have, of late, attached many bells, whistles and flashing lights to what is essentially a simple art of making people laugh. Throw as much musical talent, money, sound systems and industrial...
  1. Steve's favourite venue in Edinburgh is this very portakabin by the men's toilets at Pleasance. Unfortunately for him, it isn't an audience's, as the sparse crowd take their seats to see not the tall ...
  1. There can be few comics in the world who are louder than Phil Nichol. This seems like dubious praise indeed, but it is to the Canadian's credit, that he is able to use his over-sugared-toddler persona...
  1. An hour of mediocre stand-up comedy was commenced by McPherson who plodded his way through a series of shallow one-liners mostly about different nationalities or cultures. His spontaneity was somewhat...
  1. Wil Hodgson is the Tracy Emin of comedy. His muse? Himself and his past. More specifically , the ambivalence caused by loathing the stifling British town from which you had the misfortune to be spaw...
  1. Reginald D Hunter, creator of last years Fringe show ‘Pride & Prejudice & Niggas' comes back with a title he admits is more neutral, but a show much more ‘f**ked up'. Certainly the audien...
  1. This was an uncomfortable hour of cheap innuendo and poorly worked gags. Christine and Neil Hamilton arrive in true Butlins' style and proceed to produce entertainment that any discerning Redcoat woul...