Festival Comedy ALFIE BROWN & IVO GRAHAM Rants and interruptions hamper this newbie duo ●●●●●
Maybe they’ve had too many accolades in the past year, including the So You Think You’re Funny? title for Graham, and have become complacent. Maybe they were having an off night, or rushed up to Edinburgh, eager to show their talents but not quite sure how. Whatever happened, opener Ivo Graham appeared so fixated on the ‘weird atmosphere’, that he simply created one. Flashes of confidence were interrupted by veering off-piste when he doesn’t yet have the compere skills to cope with a quieter Wednesday night crowd and instead dedicated his slot to mumblings and an awkward game of Werewolf. Brown follows, and salvages something of the gig with a set peppered by moments of slick inspiration but hampered by half- written material and some plea-ridden rants that didn’t quite fit right and ultimately missed the mark. Ivo and Alfie are likeable and most certainly have funny bones, but this was not the show to prove it. (Siân Bevan) ■ The GRV, 226 0000, until 29 Aug (not 23), 9.50pm, £5.
JIM JEFFERIES Vitriolic rants from the bottom of his LA-based heart ●●●●● Jim Jefferies is now a full-on comedy superstar, living in LA, with the HBO seal of approval. He’s even been asked to write a sitcom (although if the letter he reads out from one channel’s legal standards department about the issues they have with the pilot is anything to go by, don’t expect to see it broadcast this side of the apocalypse). But far from softening him, this realisation of his dreams has led him to be even more bitter and disappointed at life and everybody in it. A vitriol-fuelled rant about women leads straight into his dislike of lesbians before Christians and the
34 THE LIST 19–26 Aug 2010
list.co.uk/festival
Jewish community come into his sights. The final quarter of the show is a tale
that involves muscular dystrophy and brothels and yet somehow succeeds in being the least offensive part of the act by quite some way. This isn’t ground-breaking stuff, and Jim Jefferies knows he is neither big nor clever. But for those of you with a strong stomach, he is still ferociously funny. (Gordon Eldrett) ■ Udderbelly’s Pasture, 08445 458 252, until 30 Aug (not 27), 10.30pm, £14–£17.50 (£12–£15); 27 Aug, 11.20pm, £17.50 (£15).
CAROLINE RHEA Flirting with fame and audience patience ●●●●● When Sarah Silverman played London in 2008, there was much outrage when she clocked off from a heavily- priced event some 40 minutes in. Last year, Carol Leifer, the inspiration for Seinfeld’s Elaine, graced the Fringe by reading straight from reams of A4 notes rather than ‘perform’ an actual stand-up show. Do these showbiz North Americans not actually understand what constitutes a proper comedy gig? Here, in a highly- anticipated debut, Caroline Rhea rolls
DR BROWN BECAUSE Physical comedy for willing idiots ●●●●●
Watching Dr Brown provides a good opportunity to test the theory that taste moves in circles. Or more specifically that something can become so stupid it will eventually plop back into the realm of bizarre genius. It’s a difficult call to make, but this one-man sketch showcase of budget slapstick and sick humour just about crosses the line back from offensively bad into oddly brilliant. The Dr – a character creation of US comedian and Fringe second-timer, Philip Burgers – has the face of a stoned tourist and the demeanour of an idiot. How much of this is the Dr and how much Burgers is hard to tell, but to the comedian’s credit his physical comedy is timed to perfection and full of original ideas. Mute to begin with, Burgers peels bananas on stage like a contemplative character in an absurdist drama, before proceeding to chuck them about like a baboon in a zoo. Every moment that follows serves to undercut the relative seriousness of the last, as the show descends, in an entropic spiral, to the very centre of idiotic absurdity.
Eventually Burgers starts to offer directions to the audience to help them
to understand what they’re seeing (‘Invisible puppets’; ‘Oh, hello Santa Claus’). Many spectators find themselves intimately involved as he takes the sad clown act too far, moving from sympathetic little tramp to creepy nightclub groper. The final moments aren’t suitable to describe in print, but they push the evening’s sexual confusion to its disturbing peak. In isolation, Burgers’ puerile jokes wouldn’t be funny, but it’s the route he
takes to reach them – the sideways thought processes evidently at work, and the audience’s complicity in twisting the normal boundaries of appropriateness – that make this show laugh-out-loud hilarious. The fact that you can’t tell whether it’s the product of lengthy, sober planning, or just the real-time brain-drivel of a weirdo who’s struck gold, makes it all the more compelling. (Jonny Ensall) ■ The Caves, 556 5375, until 29 Aug, 11.10pm, £7–£8 (£6–£7).
out her fella, Costaki Econompolous (yes he’s the ‘biggest name in comedy’), to do a 12-minute warm-up before trying to make everyone late for their next show by happily failing to eke out extra time with the Gilded Balloon staff (a week into the Fringe, can she really be unaware that another show is due on straight after her?). Maybe the purpose was to make herself look extra good by having her man take the audience hits with some humdrum stuff about the Loch Ness Monster (oh, yes) amid revelations that Americans and British actually have different words for the same things: what’s that all about, huh? And yet Rhea could have easily just gone on and chatted amiably and occasionally hysterically for a full hour about fame, motherhood and masturbating orang-utans. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 25 Aug, 9.30pm, £14–£15 (£13–£14).
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332