Magic and Tea With an Evil Genius – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

For this show, John Henry Blackwood is a Victorian-style evil genius, complete with a mwah-ha-ha-ha laugh that the audience is taught…

…who happens to know about, and not appreciate, Jack Dee.

So the presentation is fine – lots of performers could learn from his relaxed style – and the actual card tricks are done very well. The misdirection is so good that even knowing what to look for, it was very difficult to spot them being done, and it was only where I was sitting that meant I could see one particular one in progress.

To say much more would risk spoiling several surprises, but the show is definitely recommended, especially in the intimate venue.

4/5

On at 2:45pm at the Street Bar in Picardy Place (venue 239) until the 23rd August.

Man of Steal – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

James Freedman is a pickpocket, and a very good one. The (official) opening of the show sees him almost as a magician, making things disappear from a dummy's pockets and appear in his hands. At one point when I saw it, he didn't quite make one lift of a bell silent, but that was the only fluff – all of the other lifts of it were.

He also has a mission to help people protect their things and gives back or shreds all the stuff he takes or creates without permission. You can get an idea of how much he's up against in terms of the education when, despite telling the audience several times not to put anything of value in a back pocket, and having demonstrated how easy it can be to lift from there, the amazed volunteer 'mark' still puts his wallet back there…

The weakest moment of the show for me was, for once, the most personal bit, where he talks about an experience in his childhood. It might well work as part of a different show, but it's a distraction here. Ultimately, an audience going wow at his skills (and about to be wowed with how easy it is to steal someone's identity) are going to see the origin flashback as a pitstop rather than anything driving the show on.

He's doubtless not, despite what his flyer says, the only pickpocket at the Fringe, but he is the only one you can turn up to see. You could do a lot worse than do so.

3/5

On at 1.15pm at the Voodoo Room's Ballroom (venue 68) until the 24th.

Night of the Living Tories – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Joe Wells doesn't like the Tory party to the point of supporting the 19th Century Whigs. They may have introduced the Corn Laws, but they weren't Tories. And they repealed the Corn Laws later, but sadly the Tories are still with us.

You can argue with some of the material – does anyone think that the Tories in power alone wouldn't have been much worse than having them restricted by the LibDems in coalition? – but it's delivered well and with a definite bite.

Obviously, the audience for this is fairly self-selecting: people who think that the problem with David Cameron is that he's not right-wing enough are unlikely to go. If that's not you, and you can cope with the steps down to the venue, then this is first-rate political comedy.

4/5

On at 12 noon at Viva Mexico (venue 274) until the 23rd August.

Savvy Secrets of Successful Mistresses – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Lisa Faith Philips paid for some of her education via stripping. That formed the basis of a previous show, and this one is about another form of using sexuality to make a living: being a mistress.

It's set up as a parody of self-help gurus – she's 'Dr Faith' with a one true way of doing things – but it grates, especially to a non-American ear. There are also far too many thwacks of a riding crop against the pop-up display too – it just gets boring.

The original songs, by the other person on the stage, Ellen Mandel, are fine enough but suffer in comparison to the classics that are also performed.

Interestingly, the 'savvy secrets' are very similar to the basic rules for sex work: "get your hands on the dough" is "get the money first" by another name. But while 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' is a great song, it's rubbish financial advice – the resale value of diamonds is scandalously low.

On the evening I went, I won the 'Scotland's next top mistress' award but although I left with a badge (which I have been delightedly wearing ever since) and plastic rose, I also left feeling that the show could have been a lot, lot better given the basic material there.

It's not funny enough as a parody, and it's not personal enough. Her previous show was about her, and it worked a lot better than this one.

2/5

On at 10:15pm in the Paradise at Augustines (venue 152) until the 10th.

Bad Girls: Misandry Madness Showcase – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

A variable bill of several female comics, plus one token man in at least some form of drag.

On the night I saw it, after some chat from compère Miss Androus, it was Sarah Cassidy (solo show immediately added to the 'definitely see' list), and Jane Walker (nicely self-deprecating humour) before Ian Miller in a bad wig ('women in Essex are so orange, going down on them counts as one of your five-a-day').

He was followed by So Ying Pang (at some point, she is going to stop looking so nervous when performing), and Liz Peters (solo show even more immediately added to the 'definitely see' list).

Your cast will vary, but two palpable hits meant I was happy to have gone.

3/5

On at 9pm at the George on The Bridge (venue 346) until the 23rd August.

The Horror! The Horror! The Final Curtain – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

This was an example of flyering working – one of the performers handing out the flyers convinced me to see it because of its overarching narrative. One of the quotes on the flyer calls it a 'A home-grown Little Shop of Horrors', but it's really closer to the film version of Cabaret in that what happens on the music hall stage setting reflects the characters' real lives.

To say much more would spoil it, but the songs by Jeffrey Mayhew (on stage playing the piano) are all good, and the jokes are either good or deliberately bad. What stops me rating this a bit higher is that, despite the way that it's staged, it's a bit too subtle. It would be good to see a longer version too.

3/5

On at 7:45pm at the Bedlam Theatre (venue 49) until the 24th August. (No show on the 17th.)

Andy J Wilson's Confessions Box – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

I've been playing 'anonymous confessions' at places like BiCon for over twenty years: everyone writes down something on a piece of paper, folds it up and adds to a pile of them. The pile is then mixed up, and everyone takes one and reads it. It often gets quite rude.

'Ooh, there's a show where someone reads out anonymous confessions sent in over the internet / written on the way in – what could possibly go wrong with that?'

Well, that it did is shown by how often Andy Wilson mentioned how the previous evening's performance had been much better. It may well have been: there were only about three confessions from this evening's performance, and one of those was in French. But surely there was enough material from his website? There probably was, but he wouldn't read most of it. He'd written them down, but not marked them, and couldn't find at least one he wanted to do.

Instead, we got a bit too much of his own material, some of which didn't go down too well possibly because of the other thing he kept mentioning: how much he'd had to drink that day.

The concept is great, the execution simply wasn't there this evening. Fortunately, it was free.

2/5

It's on at The George on the Bridge (venue 346) at 6:30pm, until 9th August.

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Quite a few of the shows I would have liked to see don't open until next week, and going for unknown material by unknown companies is a risk. So I started my time at the 2014 Fringe with something where I knew the material was better than 'good': Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The company is from a school in Hawai'i, would they be ok? I am delighted to say that the answer is that they're better, they're very good. There's a cast of 27 listed in the programme, which makes it just over 33p each for a £9 ticket.

The staging is very simple, and not everyone amongst the main characters is quite as audible as the others, but that's about the main criticism I have, and because the venue's seating is on three sides, they're sometimes singing while facing away from you (I'd recommend sitting in the middle section).

The 1h45m really did not seem anything like as long. Because of the emphasis on the lyrics, Sondheim can be a hard choice, but I only noticed one small slight fluff.

Congratulations to everyone involved: this is one of the best school productions I have ever seen, and there are going to be a lot of 'professional' companies doing shows that are not nearly as good as this at the Fringe. Very definitely recommended.

4/5

It's on at theSpace on Niddry St (Venue 9) at 11:10 until the 7th August 2014. See it.

On the Playing Fields of Her Rejection

I mentioned this in the Dial L for Latchkey review as being the worst professional show I'd ever seen.

My copy of its flyer – which promised so much – has just turned up:

If you picked up that flyer, you'd go and see it, wouldn't you? Sadly for those of us who did, the flyer was about a million times better than the actual show.

It's a bit late now, but looking back with 15 years of hindsight, the similarity between 'A glorious romp with sex and gardening' and 'A gay romp with Adolf and Eva' (the subtitle of Springtime for Hitler, officially the worst play ever written – according to The Producers, anyway) should have been a big clue that it was a play that should have closed on page four.

Be grateful you never saw it… and if you did, it really was bad, wasn't it?