Festival Comedy list.co.uk/festival
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332 SHIRLEY & SHIRLEY Dark twists on familiar sketch topics ●●●●●
With fantastic energy and physical ability, strong, simple ideas and a remarkable on-stage chemistry, sketch show duo Shirley & Shirley are surely ones to watch. Comparisons to Smack the Pony are unavoidable but by no means disparaging, and while there is tightening to be done, their matching of a sophisticated interrogation of the absurd with an only-just-family-friendly look at the silliness of the everyday, could reach an impressively broad audience.
Industriously maximising their comic pairing, the Shirleys rattle through a host of relationships – friends, lovers, colleagues, twins – and move from a life-drawing class in a community centre in South London to a limbless gymnast singing Gaga on stage for Britain’s Got Talent. Marked by surprisingly dark twists, the duo turns a tone of seamless sobriety to some tricky material such as incest, racism and M&S meal-for-two-induced violence. It’s a formula that has proven to work in the past and yet this is a highly sugared dose of comic medicine for the mid-afternoon crowds. (Rosalie Doubal) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, 2.45pm, £10–£11 (£9–£10).
PETE JOHANSSON Solid stand-up as it was meant to be ●●●●● If you were to take a cursory glance at Pete Johansson’s set-list, you’d be
28 THE LIST 19–26 Aug 2010
forgiven for expecting this 2010 show to be middle-of-the-road stand-up fare. Pete’s on Earth is peppered with gags about the Canadian comic’s drugs of choice, obnoxious middle- class parents and his observations on the differences between Canadians, Americans and the British. But in Johansson’s hands, these potentially hack topics are imbued with vigour. He may have been nominated for the Best Newcomer Award at last year’s Fringe but Johansson has been plying his trade around the world for almost 20 years and boy does it show.
His shtick is honed and polished and the performance is seemingly effortless through a series of opinionated routines. While covering topics as global as over-population and religion and as personal as visits to a Korean massage parlour and just how much he dislikes his father, he maintains a delicious darkness and
Online Booking Fringe www.edfringe.com International Festival www.eif.co.uk Book Festival www.edbookfest.co.uk Art Festival www.edinburghartfestival.org
incorporates a frankness that’s often startling. This is stand-up as it should be. (Marissa Burgess) ■ Assembly Rooms, 623 3030, until 30 Aug, 9.30pm, £12–£13 (£11–12).
JEREMY LION Soused kids’ entertainer goes green ●●●●●
Ruddy-faced Jeremy Lion uses the fertile format of the children’s educational play to bind an alcoholic slapstick to lyrical ditties detailing the dangers of global warming. It’s a finely tailored package of physical, musical and cynical gags that’s at once entirely adult and utterly childish. He may be a wily wordsmith but Lion is no athlete, and it’s his physical exertions that raise the largest laughs.
While his nifty verse swiftly satirises the Noddy nature of his theatrical mode of choice, his actions lack such grace. Necking cans of Special, donning awkward appendages and punctuating the entire set with a harmonious array of burps, swears and belches, Lion’s cantankerous character is very much at odds with his sharp and current commentary. Liver-warming feats of endurance
aside, an inspired selection of props and costumes support the comic in his quest to subvert the green debate. Recalling a flurry of children’s TV references and celebrity-endorsed talking-animal films, Lion’s ‘bear in a bin’ skit will raise a cheep from even the harshest of critics. (Rosalie Doubal) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 30 Aug, 8.20pm, £12–£14 (£10–£12.50).
THE BOY WITH TAPE ON HIS FACE A masterclass of mime ●●●●●
The blunt, artless title sets the tone. Kiwi comedian Sam Wills is indeed gagged by gaffer tape, for the whole hour. Not a word is spoken. And what might have fallen flat, as the indulgent experiment of lopping a supposedly essential element off an alternative comedy act, ends up a triumph. Of course, speechless comedy isn’t at all new, and Wills freely acknowledges his influences. He wears a striped jumper and the soundtrack is accordion-heavy, evoking Marcel Marceau. A DJ bag stands in for Harpo Marx’s overcoat as repository for a jumble of props. His innovation lies in countless subtle updates as he and his hard-working tech make full use of digital precision in sound and lighting. There are relatively up-to-date cultural references here but they stop just early enough (the late 1980s as it happens) to avoid being too
temporal or grasping for trendiness.
But the true, basic, underlying reason the show works
is that Wills is a slapstick virtuoso. It goes beyond superhuman muscle control and intuitive timing, both of which he has in oodles. It’s an understanding, itself probably not expressible in words, of which secret combinations of gesture, light and music can make almost everyone laugh, and how to create them.
All of which sounds rather worthy and chin-stroking on paper. But make no mistake, it’s a silly gig. There are singing shoes, a ‘babycopter’ and a techno dustbin. There is far more audience participation than would be right or proper for anyone else, but for The Boy With Tape On His Face, it is oxygen. For the audience, emboldened and mollified by the fact that a mute comedian can’t possibly slag them off, it’s a riot. (Sam Healy) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 29 Aug, 10.30pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9).