OK, so the numbers have been crunched and the results are in. I had a relatively low-key Edinburgh Fringe this year – I only saw 84 shows. I should hang my head in shame. I managed to review most of them. Here is a round-up of the ones that almost got away.
Magic seemed bigger than ever at the Fringe this year. And none were bigger than Colin Cloud, although his run at the cavernous Pleasance Grand (four stars) was probably relatively low-key compared to his shows in Vegas. Cloud’s Hoax addressed the very timely issue of what is real and what isn’t – he made things disappear and reappear, he predicted what people were going to say, he even turned an audience member into a mind reader. Amazeballs! Throughout he made you wonder what is real and what isn’t real. With one exception. He never revealed whether his spectacularly big hair was authentic or not. Maybe it’s best that some things remain a mystery.
I’m sure that new tricks are being conjured up every day, but sometimes it feels merely like old tricks are being re-invented. Andrew Frost (Pleasance, four stars) was performing mainly with a pack of cards in a tin hut, but from what I could see he was using similar classic devices to Cloud. Frost is an excellent close-up magician, employing sleight of hand to shift cards around to places you would never expect. I think that's what he does, anyway. Either that or voodoo. I could see some of his tricks coming, but definitely not all of them. He’s got a fresh personality, part-confident, part-self-deprecating, and could probably make a good living as a Louis Theroux lookalike if he masters an American accent. Pretty ace.
Ian Stone (Counting House, four stars) is one of the older comics who has cracked Edinburgh. He plays a big pay-what-you-want room, fills it and probably walks away with a profit, which really is a rare magic trick up here. This year’s show, Pleb’s Pow Wow, was a little underpowered – he let the audience pick topics from a numbered list which meant that the set jittered around from subject to subject. You can always guarantee a laugh with Stone, but I prefer him when he has more of a theme to his schtick. This time he gave too much power to the people and we should know by now that's a bad thing.
I was one of the judges of the Malcolm Hardee Awards which meant I saw some pretty unusual shows. For public transport nerds I saw a show all about bus stops (Hoots, three stars) – bus stops made in the shape of fruit, bus stops on the very edge of Europe, bus stops that were hidden in hedges. Jim Judge's Absolute Bus Stops of Northern Europe and Beyond was more like a powerpoint lecture than a stand-up show but certainly both informative and entertaining. He is now thinking about a show about toilet hand dryers of the world. Whether he’ll be taking the pictures himself for that remains to be seen.
Perhaps even odder was the show entitled Thermos Museum Books (Canon’s Gait, three stars), which wasn’t actually about thermos flasks at all although one did appear briefly. Instead it was an extended anecdote with illustrations about how one man disrupted a wedding. Our host was like a gloriously tetchy John Shuttleworth, chastising one audience member for rustling his copy of the pamphlet given out at the start. Was it character comedy? Was it genuine? Pure absurdism? Who can say, but either way it deserved its Hardee nomination for Comic Originality even if the comedy was possibly accidental.
The Hardee Award for Originality went to Yogie Belle (Bannermans, three stars) for his show Auditory Awakenings With Mr Tingles In The House Of ASMR, along the way taking in dolphins and life coaching. i wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but audience members who bought into his bearded mumbo jumbo loved it. Not a cult in the making, clearly a cult already.
Dom McGovern (Pleasance, four stars) picked up an Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nomination for his debut. He’s a new name to me but a clearly skilled storyteller. His laugh-packed show weaved together tales of growing up, an account of his eating disorder and a visit to Brazil with consummate skill. There are hints of Tom Allen in his camp/angry delivery but that’s no bad thing. I expect TV companies to be pouncing on him after this success.
Chris Forbes (Monkey Barrel, four stars) was the first winner of the McTavish Award, a new prize named after the late comic Vladimir McTavish/Paul Sneddon which aims to acknowledge the Scottish talent here that often seems to be missed by other awards panels. Forbes’ show is set at Christmas and what starts as a straightforward bit of observational comedy about Yuletide cliches evolves into something much more personal. Yes, it’s another dead dad show, but it plays out in a distinctive way that is both funny and moving. Good to see him getting a nod for it.
A quick word for Tim Key. I’d seen Loganberry before (Pleasance, five stars) but wanted to finish my stint with some surefire comedy gold. It was a late night show though and it looked like it was going to be disrupted by a blokey stag gaggle, all wearing distinctive white baseball caps. Key was momentarily distracted by a few heckles but it's an absolute tribute to him that he turned things round without having them ejected. At the end he said he was “petrified” at the start of the gig. Such is the precarious life of even the toppermost stand-ups. Tour dates here.
As the Fringe reached its end I had time to put my theatre critic hat on briefly. Little Animals (Traverse at Lyceum, four stars) is written by and stars Paul Ready (above), who comedy fans will immediately recognise from Motherland and more recently as Sue Johnston’s wet son in Ann Droid. This is Ready is serious mode, with an in-the-round monologue about climate change, centred on the story of a friend being driven to take his own life. Compelling told, Ready is an engaging presence – it’s serious but not without its darkly comic moments. Catch it when it tours.
Max Olesker’s Making The Cut (Pleasance Dome, four stars) is another of those solo shows that straddles comedy and theatre. It’s not stand-up and not a play, it’s a monologue in which Olesker tells the true story of how he fell in love with a woman from an orthodox Jewish family and was not Jewish enough for her. Olesker skilfully recounts the sometimes Kafkaesque hoops he had to hop through to be accepted. It’s funny, moving and needless to say all about the lengths one man goes to to prove his love – even undergoing elective adult circumcision. Is his account of the operation funny? Is the Pope a Catholic?
On the subject of Jews onstage, one of the last things I saw was Wiesenthal (Gilded Balloon, four stars), a one-man play about legendary Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Even in this darkest of stories about his determination to trace war criminals wherever they were hiding there was humour.
It felt apt that Wiesenthal was one of the last shows I saw in Edinburgh. In the play he was still hunting down perpetrators of evil on his very last day at work. At the very last hour. And I was hunting for that very last comedy hit on my very last day, very last hour of the Fringe. Not that I’m saying I’m as morally good as a Nazi hunter. That’s for you to decide…
