Phil Nichol: Welcome to Crazytown, The Stand
Phil Nichols single-handedly populates the nightmarish Crazytown in
1970s Baltimore jazz club Bertha's as recently widowed beat poet Bobby
Spade, opening with a storming introductory number reminiscent of George
Clooney's performance in 'O brother, where art thou?' and accompanied
by a talented backing duo playing a range of instruments.
Most of Phil's characters represent an aspect of neurosis, and all are
wholeheartedly inhabited, as they take up their part of the long
rambling narrative poem or break into a new musical number.
Edgar Allen Poe features, along with Lady Tuesday, Anger Freeway, Denial Park Confusion and Big Love Prison.
The show fizzles with supernatural energy as the Canadian whirling
dervish delivers a breakneck performance few could match, including a
showstopping burst of Billie Holiday back from the grave.
For all this, it is more musical theatre with an 'X' rating than
outright comedy and it helps to be a jazz fan to appreciate the
narrative.
Then again a jazz fan might take it the wrong way since it also mocks a
great many clichés about jazz as well as performance poetry.
A masterclass in performance by this multi-layered acting talent and it keeps this scary man off the streets!
Arj Barker - Let Me Do The Talking - The Assembly @ George Street
Arj Barker is a deceptively youthful veteran of the international comedy
circuit and 'Flight of the Conchords' guest star and tells us from the
start that he'll do all the talking, thank you.
The sigh of relief from the audience was palpable as we sat back in our seats to enjoy the show.
It was a safe and comfortable flight in the hands of our comedy captain
who started off, indeed, with aircraft black boxes, enlarging on an old
joke, about why not make the whole aircraft out of them, to encompass
the Death Star in Star Wars and what a different film it would have been
if it too were made of black box before going on to marvel at the
flight expertise and deadly aim of a former farm boy in the self-same
film.
Arj went on to share his witty thoughts on 3-D movies and the
environment, opining that if global warming is the problem, then surely
the real culprit is the sun.
He explored intelligent subjects as the incredulous but know-all
goofball, never getting too political, but always managing to remain
unexpected, and his skill at deconstructing and reconstructing jokes and
weaving themes together was impressive.
His eyes glittered with echoes of Mike Myers as he drew us to a happy landing. An all-round ambassador for American comedy.
Jack Whitehouse - The Pleasance
I was braced to dislike the obviously self-regarding and narcissistic
Jack Whitehouse the moment he swaggered on stage, but he worked the room
skilfully from the start and as the show went on I warmed to his
pathological hatred of the former classmate Robert Pattinson who had
made it big in vampire film 'Twilight' and now boasted legions of teen
fans drooling over him.
This led to reciting excerpts of the five badly written biographies of his former friend and disagreeing with them.
One telling passage described the psychological trauma to Robert of having his shoelaces mindlessly stolen.
Cue for Jack to produce them from his pocket a decade later to gales of laughter.
Despite his success in presenting Celebrity Big Brother, Jack still
lives with his parents at the age of 22 which led to a rich vein of
comedy in its own right as he described their subversive resistance to
him having a sex life under their roof (endless teddies and cushions
appearing in his room for one), his father's mild racism and attempts to
get a mention in the show with increasingly outrageous behaviour and
his mother's struggle to win 'Child Top Trumps' among other mothers in
her local supermarket, when Jack just wasn't making her quite as proud
as his former classmate Robert Pattinson's mother.
Then he had the ignominy of landing in the tabloids in a photograph,
showing him snorting a line of coke from his Blackberry phone, which
Jack is obviously contrite about in real life for the sake of his hurt
beloved parents, though he is also at pains to point out that had he had
a real drug problem, it would have been an i-Pad.
Having earlier admitted fruitlessly begging his father for a Barbie doll
as a child, Jack finished the show by mincing off as his other
childhood hero, Robin Hood, to the stirring chorus of the 1950s Robin
Hood theme song.
A young comedian who will surely go from strength to strength.
Chris Ramsey - Aggrophobic - The Pleasance
It's not easy being a soft Geordie, not least when the world seems
determined to give a man, not just his fair share of aggro, but his
unfair share too, the kind of random, crazy stuff that means you
scarcely know what you're being accused of or beaten up for anymore.
Twenty-two-year-old stand-up Chris Ramsey captured the frustration and anger we all feel about these scenarios perfectly.
Not that he came up with any brilliant solutions. Just empathy really.
Though it crossed my mind he could help himself by ditching the comedy
jeans whose crotch started somewhere around his kneecaps and gave him
the proportions of a man-sized cigarette stub in addition to impeding
his running away ability.
And the forward-brushed mullet was just asking for trouble too. And no
self-respecting Geordie should go for Bee Gee brilliant white when
getting their teeth bleached either.
Too easy for their enemies to aim kicks at in the dark. I refrained from
giving Mr Ramsey any aggro about his image to test his defensive skills
against attack though and felt he had actually picked a very timely
subject for his show.
Notwithstanding, his sartorial skills weren't exactly cultivated by the
childhood abuse of a tight father forcing him to wear a tracksuit to a
family wedding to spare the expense of a proper suit. Cue hilarious
photos.
A natural and highly engaging comedian who will go far.
Brendan Burns -Y'Know - Love 'n' God 'n' Metaphysics 'n' Shit
I was expecting great things from Brendan Burns but found his show to be
as lazy as its title, despite frenetic efforts from his musician friend
'Davina' (David Eastgate), 'fresh off the boat' who waggled his
perilously low-slung jeaned tush like a Tasmanian devil as an entree
then proceeded to play his guitar like a maniac and interrupt the show
at regular intervals for the rest of the evening, sometimes enhancing
it, sometimes not.
However too much repetition of 'Get Under It!' 'The kids' love it!' and
'They don't know!' does not necessarily bestow upon a performer the
popularity of a latter-day Frankie Howerd, and some of us did not even
like that aspect of FH in the first place.
The main meat of the show, apart from his staple of the hatred he feels
for 'Melburnians' was Brendan's devastation at being dumped by the love
of his life a 'proper crazy' woman because that's the type who really
float his boat.
A woman he loved so much he actually began to smell like her. A woman he
stopped being shallow for, stopped his excesses for. Now he didn¹t know
how to start again and everything seemed so meaningless except his
11-year-old son, who could still make him laugh.
Of course the humour and the touching bits of his soliloquy to her were
all rather undercut by the news that 'Bea' had since returned to him and
he wasn't so lovelorn after all at the end of the show.
I felt half-pleased for him, half cheated. Which kind of summed up my
feelings about the whole show. He may be a former 'Perrier' winner, but
Brendan Burns gives every appearance of resting on his laurels these
days. 'Get under it, Brendan!'
Toulson and Harvey Used To Be Friends
Two former public schoolboys indulge in an hour of borrowed music hall buffoonery.
One plays the guitar, one has a decent voice and is reminiscent of a young Simon Williams.
The show opens with a serenade reliant on but minus castanets, a war
scene is enacted where one has left the other for dead and then goes on
to sleep with his butch wife Helga.
A rousing rendition of Two Little Boys is sung. They jump around and
make an audience member highly embarrassed by insisting on making him
pretend to be said butch ex-wife Helga and kissing him against his will.
The rest of the show is spent larking about with lots of accusations and
counter-accusations about betrayal and sleeping with the other's wife.
The double act is no more as a result of all this and yet oddly remains
very much in evidence on stage. It was a relief when it was over.
My least favourite Edinburgh show of 2010.
Jeremy Lion Goes Green - Pleasance Dome
Jeremy Lion is a northern children's entertainer wholly unsuitable for
children sporting disturbing mismatched garb and with a drink problem he
quickly forgets to hide.
Monstrously selfish, he doesn't give a damn about saving the planet,
going as far as to sing a braggart's song about what colour he is not,
ably accompanied by his brilliant multi-talented sidekick, Hilary Cox
who looks a bit like he could be related to Dame Edna Everage's sidekick
and former bridesmaid, Madge.
Then Christmas Carol-like, the ghost of a large polar bear rises up from
Jeremy's wheelie bin and forces him to reassess his priorities.
Cue for Jeremy to be whisked off in his self-rotating garden shed to
emerge to a make-shift chiffon ocean where he picks up a torch and
examines the audience 'sealife' to inform each that they are consigned
to a doom of fungal diseases and fates too ghastly to mention.
A dancing tree, courtesy of Hilary forms the next part of the greening
of Jeremy. By the end of the show Jeremy is a contrite and fully-fledged
environmentalist, eager to mend his selfish ways by ardently downing
the contents of every glass bottle in his possession as fast as he can
in order to recycle it.
If you love Count Arthur Strong, you'll love this worthy comedy cousin, Jeremy Lions.
Ian D Montfort - Touching The Dead - The Pleasance
Ian D Montfort aka Tony Binns ambles onto the stage in dragon-motifed
jeans and sports jacket with a shaggy blonde perm and the easy oil of a
clutch of Derek Acorahs.
He is anxious to reassure that he is the 'Sunderland Psychic' and not
the 'Sunderland Psycho' and that was a mistake on his business cards.
However the police did finally release him after four hours. Then they
challenged him to solve the case if he was so psychic so he proceeded to
find eight bodies in one afternoon at which point he was re-arrested!
All hilarious throwaway stuff but as someone who has seen many mediums
in real life, I was intrigued to know if the entire show was going to be
a mickey-take or a debunk as so many comedy routines on this subject
are.
Much to my amazement it was half and half. Whilst Ian D Montfort had the
mannerisms of a stage psychic down to a tee including touching the arms
of his male volunteers a tad too long (hinting at the fact nearly all
male mediums seem to be gay) and made scores of deliberately obvious
statements that the audience couldn't possibly disagree with such as
once having had a grandmother, he also hit upon some startling
coincidences getting audience names and details right - sometimes quite
obscure ones - and correctly divining a random passage from the complete
works of Shakespeare as well as reciting the correct answer to a random
Guinness Book of Records question.
So even if he was only guilty of mind-reading and a photographic memory,
that still represented one hell of a feat. And as he pointed out at the
end, if we were all audience plants and he had picked on most of us, he
was getting 'f***k all money for the show!
Brian Clough, John Lennon and Jesus also came back from the dead to make guest appearances.
An amazing and thought-provoking comedy show and as Mr D Montfort
pointed out 'You don't have to be bereaved to enjoy yourself'
No Son of Mine - Pleasance
Don Hazely (Alex Kirk) is a seedy secondhand car salesman with an
inflated opinion of himself, an end of the pier sense of humour, and a
shiny-suited persona thoroughly stuck in the 1970s.
His son Dennis (Rufus Jones) is a sensitive theatrical, camp as hell but
not admitting anything. His father turns up at the end of a long day
selling cars to surprise Dennis rehearsing his latest one-man play
'Afghan Hounds' which turns out to be a highly homo-erotic homage to a
boy called Abdul in front of a mosque backdrop and involving an Arabian
outfit replete with false beard.
Don quickly finds fault and starts making unwelcome suggestions for
inserting jokes and his real motive in turning up - ie to lure his
wayward only son back to the car dealership where he belongs and
persuade him to abandon this whole theatre nonsense becomes evident as
he soon sabotages proceedings to turn it into the Don Hazely show.
The pair then proceed to engage in word to word combat for the rest of
the show, disagreeing about comedy and reminiscing about the woman who
left a large hole in both their lives when she disappeared - Don's wife
and Dennis's mother. This leads to a disturbing but oddly touching scene
where Don asks his son to play his own mother and re-enacts their first
meeting where they end up dancing together.
Eventually they realise the inappropriateness of this scene and revert
back to character to bicker some more until Dennis finally admits that
he misses the car dealership after all and concedes to his father's
pleas to return to it.
Like the Steptoe and Son premise, this is the dynamic of a father and
son who both depend on but fear losing each other, while also
acknowledging the son's need to break away, not least when it appears
that his father's only concession to gayness is ever going to be the
wearing of a pink tie.
More theatre than laugh out loud comedy, but a tremendously accomplished
piece and well deserving of its plaudits.
Ginger & Black - Pleasance
Named after a designer organic chocolate I presumed, but no, it turned
out that Ginger and Black were a duo comprising of flame-tressed female
(Eri Jackson) and afrocarribean male (Daniel Taylor).
Both possessed an impressive ability to physically morph, she from
dowdy drudge with psychopathic tendancies to playful temptress, he from
young hoodie thug to booming adult male figure of authority.
Following an introduction of deadpan wit 'Hi we're Ginger and Black
because I'm Ginger and he's.....' (awkward silence), their opening
number was a well-crafted and hilarious duet-rap with stylophone about
book obsession which gave rise to high expectations for the rest of the
show.
However from hereon in, the action switched to a series of prison
sketches, some hit, some miss, with a most tenuous thread running
through of a woman murdering her husband for spurious reasons and the
unlikely consequences.
Angela Lansbury and a dolphin rapist featured heavily and for reasons
still unknown to this reviewer who lost the plot somewhere about halfway
through, though I did rediscover my laughing muscle at the cue card
warning 'Due to unforeseen circumstances Angela Lansbury will now be
played by a black man.'
A talented duo, but the material strength and cohesion of this year's
Edinburgh offering from them could have been a great deal stronger. One
to watch for the future.
Kevin Eldon Is Titting About, The Stand
Not many acts do their own warm-up act as another character but then
Kevin Eldon, cult staple of such shows as Brass Eye and Alan Partridge
is no ordinary comedian in this, his first Edinburgh foray in which his
shtick is that he is roadtesting various characters, unable to decide
which one to go with.
An eerily convincing failed beat poet (Paul Hamilton) well-versed in all
the clichés of the genre and playfully deconstructing them and himself,
gave way to Fictitious Yorkshireman doing the same for Northern
prejudice.
A rapping leather-clad Frenchman with a Grade 3 grip on his native
language (i.e. your school textbook come to life), and my favourite, the
anorak-clad rapping Pensions Advisor followed. Interspersed were a few
glimpses of Kevin himself, the highlight of which was surely his
extraordinary song 'Jump' in which he impersonated various
malfunctioning audio equipment, ably demonstrating that no format is
foolproof, however technology may advance.
Each act was preceded by a visit from on high in Mr Bean tradition. Was
it the big G or was it an alien force moving Kevin's spirit thus? We
were never quite certain.
Kevin Eldon may have served a long comedy apprenticeship in the shadow
of bolder stars and allowing shyness and 'laziness' as he terms it to
deter him from treading the boards of Edinburgh, but he is certainly
making up for lost time now and looks set to soon have a clutch of
awards to show for it and television companies biting off his hand to
give him his own TV series.
A man whose time has come.
He kicked off with a terrible undertaker/bicycle gag - poor by anyone's standards - and embarked on some embarrassing audience interaction, quickly mentioning the war to the Germans in the front row and insulting my abundant hair (the baldy coot!)
Prince Abdi is an experience and talented professional comedian who has appeared on television and played the Comedy Store and Jongleurs during his career.
