circleWe’re halfway through the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Over a third of the 3,600 shows are comedies. In the pouring rain, I’m climbing one of the city’s many hills to get to the next show. It’s the festival’s 50th show. This is my second year as a judge for the festival. Edinburgh Comedy AwardsThe Best Show award is the festival’s most coveted prize, having been won by everyone from Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson at the Cambridge Footlights in 1981 to later winners like Al Murray, Bridget Christie and Rose Matafeo. It means a golden ticket into a dingy venue where unknowns become the stars of tomorrow before our very eyes.
The first hour is a comedian’s chance to showcase their quirks and quirks to the world, and no one does it more captivatingly than Abby Wambaugh. 17The first 3 minutes of the show (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★) And that’s exactly what it is: the start of 17 different shows, each showcasing a different chapter in Wambaugh’s life – her move to the Netherlands, her pregnancies and miscarriages – and they’re full of creativity and surprises.
Similarly, Jing Hao Li, who describes himself as “born in China, raised in Singapore”, Swim in a submarine (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★). With clever wordplay, he celebrates the brothers he might have had if his father’s sperm had swum a little faster. With a broad grin and a boyish accent, he speaks of military conscription and romance in college dining halls. His dreams and reality blend together, making it all feel like a dizzying journey into the unknown deep underwater.
Some people use theatre to deal with trauma. Baby ReindeerAnna Akana’s debut work, It gets dark (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★) weaves together her sister’s suicide and her own encounter with a stalker, whom she jokingly names Daddy Reindeer. Dead Name (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★) tells the story of her coming out as a transgender woman, a work that sees her say goodbye to her past identity and celebrate her new self.
But the newcomer who’s garnering the most attention is Joe Kent Walters, who takes to the stage Joe Kent Walters Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! (★★★★★) starts late, at 11:25pm. Any tiredness disappears when he appears, stumbling in as Frankie Monroe, the old-school Rotherham working-class club host, dripping with Sudocream, the white face paint. “What is this?” he bellows. The next hour is as bizarre, grotesque and funny as anything from The League of Gentlemen to Johnny Vegas, with demon-possessed puppets, dirty rubber gloves and a welcome visit from Monroe’s rotting-toothed nephew, Brandy. It may be the stuff of nightmares, but Monroe’s growls will stay with me long after that final deal with the devil is over.
In the midst of a festival storm, I started playing Fringe Bingo, where Hitler jokes are not uncommon. My eyes are here (Monkey Barrel, ★★★★) focuses on relationships with parents, and this year autism has been a central theme for many. we In (Monkey Barrel, ★★★), Pierre Novelly describes how his spectrum disorder affects his daily life: he orders large quantities of rye bread online, struggles to decide what to wear in the morning, and uses food as a reward. Autistic Mom (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★) Josephine Lacey speaks candidly about raising her 17-year-old autistic son, in a story that’s both funny and educational: She taught him to masturbate.
Larry Dean had been told all his life that he might have autism, but just recently, accompanied by his mother, he went to get tested. The confirmed results have given us new insight into his past and personality, which has Dodger (Monkey Barrel, ★★★★). Written as a love letter to his grandmother, who died last year at 98, it’s a tender, moving hour in which Dean repays her years of support by going along with her theory that dementia is the cause. He acts like a hurricane, barely taking a breath, with a joke neatly tucked into every sentence.
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Like Dean, many comedians choose to use their time on stage as an opportunity to analyze themselves. Trampling (Monkey Barrel, ★★★★) He’s his own punching bag. He suffers from gout, an eight-year marijuana addiction and dyspraxia. “I’m either really bad at maths, or I’m really good at it,” he says with a straight face. But the Edinburgh audience was happy to embrace his self-deprecation.
Colin Holt Colin (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★) Also. In his first Fringe show away from his actor-singer-welder alter-ego Anna Mann, Holt stands alone. But Mann fans needn’t worry: Holt has organic theatricality running through his veins. Recounting his childhood in Mapperley while analysing his current life with his children, the show gently invites reflection on what it actually means to be normal, and to belong. “He’s funny,” Holt’s father once said of him, ColinThe beauty of this show is in its celebration of differences.
Holt’s traces are from John Tothill Thank God this will last forever (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★) a jovial hedonist recounts the time a malaria trial went awry and urges the reader to get drunk and just have fun. The show, Tothill suggests, could go on all night, and what a night it would be.
In a daze of laughter and exhaustion, I began to wonder what makes a good comedy moment: Is it just a belly laugh, as I discovered at Lou Wall’s shows? Bisexual Lamentations (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★)?While it does reveal an almost unbelievable conversation Wall had while selling a bed on Facebook Marketplace, the film otherwise relies too heavily on recycled videos from the internet, perhaps because it’s watching panel show favourite Sophie Duker perform live in her heyday. But I love her, daddy. (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★) Even if it didn’t quite have the same sparkle as her previous two Fringe appearances.
Or is it the sense of danger I certainly felt at Olga Koch’s brave actions? Olga Koch is coming From money (Monkey Barrel, ★★★★) she talks about growing up as a member of Russia’s privileged class, where being a cook is more respectable than ever, and where her opportunities and successes are constantly being addressed and unravelled, resulting in a show that is puzzling but uniquely revealing.
But courage doesn’t always pay off. Open-minded human exploration (Only Tonic in the Cave, ★★), a look back at the year after a 2015 video of him using the N-word in a comedy scene resurfaced, feels like an exercise in self-indulgence: a complex meditation on language and power that tries and fails to walk the line between apology and asserting the right to reply. Brown is clearly a big thinker, and his points are sharp. But this feels unfinished and misguided.
The Fringe is a treasure trove of talent and it’s great to come across unexpected gems. This year I saw shows that moved me, made me think and laugh more than I’ve ever seen at this stage of the festival before. But what’s so great about the Fringe is that it’s also so frustrating: every night a future giant could be performing unknown to the world, myself included.
