1. Liam Williams | Laughing Horse @ The Cellar Monkey, Edinburgh
Liam William’s Capitalism was not just the most exciting comedy show I saw in 2014, it’s the one that best nails what 2014 is about: inchoate anger at the way we live now, but also impotence in the face of the powers, and ways of thinking, that govern us.
Sounds a hoot? In Williams’ hands it is, even if the laughs are of the inkiest variety. The set finds Williams seeking meaning – soul, even – in modern life. He wants to reject capitalism, but finds himself hopelessly complicit. He wants to be happy, but isn’t convinced by the brands of happiness made available in the consumer marketplace. He’s alienated from the world – and from his own alienation, for which he reserves his most cutting disdain.
It feels powerfully like the voice of a generation: so much feeling, such a sophisticated intelligence, and nowhere to put it that isn’t compromised or cliched. But it’s also totally specific to Williams: you never doubt the hard-won authenticity of his worldview, nor that the depression, the battered idealism or the lyrical flair are anyone’s other than his own. It made me laugh, and made my heart beat faster.
2. Daniel Kitson | Battersea Arts Centre, London
In a brief run, Daniel Kitson presented his first Christmas show: a story of one woman’s snowy journey home in the company of a strange old codger. In its passionate engagement with what Christmas is all about, its eye for the detail of unheralded lives, and for line after beautifully wrought line, it revealed a comedian-storyteller at the height of his towering powers.
3. Bridget Christie | Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh
Comedy’s funniest feminist voice came back strong with a show, An Ungrateful Woman, that maybe even topped its award-bagging predecessor. This year’s offering – about FGM, patriotic chauvinism and yoghurt adverts – synthesised the ardent anti-sexism campaigner and the goonish clown-comic to potent effect.
4. James Acaster | Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Past Edinburgh comedy award-nominee Acaster unleashed his best performance yet this time around in Recognise – masquerading as an undercover cop masquerading as a comedian, to turn his nerdy gaze on supremely unimportant topics. Seldom has frippery been delivered with such meticulous comic skill.
5. Sara Pascoe | Assembly George Square, Edinburgh
Sexual anthropology and the history of love affairs: you could read books on those subjects, or you could go see Sara Pascoe, learn as much and have a high old time along the way. The pleasure of watching Pascoe is in accompanying someone supersmart, entertaining and well-read while they work through their anxieties and obsessions in public. Big questions for her, big fun for the rest of us.
6. Kim Noble | Traverse, Edinburgh
Kim Noble wasn’t billed as comedy on this year’s fringe. He’s long since spiralled off into some live art/theatre/comedy/confessional zone that’s entirely his own. This follow-up to his shocking Kim Noble Will Die – a prank show meets multimedia existentialist enquiry entitled You’re Not Alone – was just as devious, emotionally naked, unethical and appallingly funny.
7. Sheeps | Bedlam, Edinburgh
In a great summer for innovative sketch comedy, first among equals was this new show from ex-Footlights trio Sheeps, which staged and restaged the same sketch over and again in a variety of styles. The joke gets richer and deeper, the angles the trio attack from ever more surprising.
8. Funz and Gamez | Just the Tonic @ The Mash House, Edinburgh
This year’s wild card found northern club comic Phil Ellis and pals laying on a show for children – one that established itself as the sleeper hit of the Edinburgh fringe. The joke is how crassly Ellis and friends flout all the protocols of kids’ –entertainment. The pleasure is that the children – now aware, now oblivious, of what’s going on – have a whale of a time regardless.
9. Aamer Rahman | Soho theatre, London
Aussie standup Aamer Rahman was near to quitting comedy when a clip of his act went viral on YouTube. He’s now known worldwide for his “reverse racism” skit, but even without it – it didn’t feature in the Soho show – the former Fear of a Brown Planet man had plenty to say on race, politics and Islamophobia.
10. Josie Long | Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh
Josie Long’s new show teetered at the same crossroads as Sara Pascoe’s: that late-youth, early-middle-age moment when you start asking more from life, including (whisper it) children and lifelong love. Better known for her early scrapbook comedy, this found Long at her self-reflexive, infectiously enthusiastic best.
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