Tag: Comedy

I hadn't realised that this was done by the same woman behind The Coin-Operated Girl until she walked on stage: the link isn't on the flyer for either show.

This is centred around her experience of meeting someone who pretended to be interested in her, but was much more interested in being able to steal hundreds of pounds from her account. It turned out that a) the police couldn't do very much (he'd seen her enter her PIN) and b) he'd been conning a series of women into sending him money. Because of the first one, she went to a family friend who took her through the rules of a good revenge, including things like knowing when to start and stop, and not being a dick about it.

The audience is invited to contribute their experiences and suggestions too. It's a work in progress, and may well change through its run here, but it's already at a good standard.

3/5

It's on at 2:30 at The Beat (venue 56) until the 23rd August (no shows on Mondays).

Dan Willis has been doing shows on things he cares about for a while – the audience included a still-not-engaged-yet couple who he recognised from seeing them over the past seven years. This year, it's zombies, and specifically the funny side of a zombie apocalypse.

Much of the source material is from the first three series of The Walking Dead, with the slight spoiler that most of the starting don't make it to the end of the first one.

The basics of survival (lock yourself somewhere, preferably with a bath you can fill for water, get a number of the right sort of people together – survival experts are going to be more use than comedians – and then get yourself to a DIY warehouse for stuff) are covered, along with the way that bathrooms are, contrary to the advice of TWD, quite sensible places to be.

It's all fine stuff, done in a friendly way, but I'd probably have enjoyed it more if I had seen TWD or even if it convinced me that I really wanted to do so.

3/5

On at 1:15pm at the annex of The Liquid Room (venue 276) until the 24th August.

Miranda Kane used to work as an escort with the working name of BBW Melody. Having retired from sex work a couple of years ago, she's moved into comedy and has used the experiences to create a great solo show about her earlier life.

It starts with how she got into the business – easily and willingly, when she realised that there were people willing to pay for what she offered – and goes to some of the details how she was successful, before going to a look online at some of the people working in Edinburgh now and the mixed blessing of reviews.

Quibble #1 is that she treats some of her personal choices as universal good practice or as industry norms. Showing your face on an escorting website is not for everyone, no matter how much some enquirers want you to show it (most of them will never book you anyway), for example, and people have different condom preferences (there's no evidence that thicker condoms are more reliable).

The end of the prepared act is a countdown of the ten most popular things men asked / paid to do with her. Quibble #2 is that there's no reminder that the attention she got was down to how she marketed herself, and different escorts are going to get different requests. But so long as you treat it as reliable as a typical magazine survey, it's also fun.

Then comes a Q&A, with – on the afternoon I saw it – surprisingly few questions, so if you have a question about sex work, you've even more reason to go.

Miranda's personality comes across delightfully, and you can see why people paid hundreds (and occasionally thousands for longer bookings) of pounds to spend time with her. Being part of the free fringe means you can do it for free.

Highly recommended.

5/5

On at 5pm until the 24th August (except Mondays) at the Liquid Rooms Annex (venue 276) underneath South Bridge. See it.

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.

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.

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.