One week down, two to go. Loads still left to look forward to – and a lot worth rounding up here, for those seeking shows to see on your weekend jaunt to the (Scottish) capital. I haven’t managed until now to write about the visiting US standup Kyle Kinane, which is no reflection on his quality. His debut fringe set – although he’s already a big noise Stateside – is dependably funny, particularly in its second half, when Kinane unleashes what feels like a signature set-piece about food. Hymning the virtues of “processed” over natural, relating a queasy visit to a Korean seafood market, and itemising the weird anthropology of dining on crab, it feels like a sequence engineered over time into a very efficient (chicken?) nugget of machine-tooled comedy.
While we’re on the subject of beardy comic-philosophers, Phil Jerrod’s debut has been much admired in some quarters. It took me a while to get on board with the stary-eyed thing he does: it feels like a mild-mannered man trying too hard to look unbalanced. The opening stretches are a bit dependent, too, on class cliches, as Jerrod jokes about his rural upbringing and how the bar has raised when it comes to signalling your bourgeois status. But the writing begins to exert a grip as the Brighton man takes a wide-angle look at contemporary life. No prizes for the novelty of his insights, but he certainly turns a neat comic phrase, including one about the modern necessity to be “up and dressed at 3am with seven browser windows open” if you want to actually achieve/buy/organise anything, and another about the housing crisis. “Sorry, Mr Jerrod, you don’t look fiscally buoyant enough to buy a one-bed flat overlooking the municipal bins.”
Among the other newcomers, Harriet Kemsley met with a frosty reception when I attended last weekend. But she didn’t help herself. The show is about her “trying to be an adult”, she says (she’s 28), and it flits insubstantially from a duff audience participation game called “Which Disney princess are you?”, via a riff about still getting presents from Santa, to a joke about her anxiety that her friends are all getting married. (“Even the toilet’s engaged.” Oh dear.) It’s mostly weak, it’s delivered with an unhelpful nervous energy and it flickers into life only latterly, when she tells us that her boyfriend recently cheated on her with a prostitute. Suddenly, something interesting to talk about! – but then the gig’s done. I had more fun with Matt Winning, delivering a silly set on the Free Fringe imagining himself the son of Robert Mugabe. It’s lightweight stuff, and some of the biggest laughs derive from cheap targets – like the online reviews of a particular brand of kitchen bin. But Winning’s got an attractively impish spirit and there are some spry jokes here. I’ll keep an eye out for his next show.
I also saw Corey White, award-winner at both the Melbourne and Sydney comedy festivals in the last 12 months. The Cane Toad Effect tells the story of White’s spectacularly dysfunctional upbringing, the son of a criminal dad and a heroin addict mum who spent Corey’s childhood in jail before dying of an overdose. That’s just the beginning of a comedy bildungsroman that takes in crystal meth addiction, sexual confusion and a near-miss suicide attempt. Mercifully, White has charm and comic chops to keep this upbeat. But not phonily so: finding the funny has been as much psychological defence mechanism as professional obligation. In that context, one can forgive a slightly pious note to the show’s later stages, as White draws conclusions from his life so far. There are less compelling moments – his relationship material is unexceptional – but for the most part this lurid tale is told humanely and well.
I’ve written about a handful of sketch shows already – Daphne, Massive Dad, Beard – and have seen a few more. Last year’s best newcomer nominees Gein’s Family Giftshop return with a show that – pace my thoughts on second-album syndrome earlier in the week – is firmly in the consolidation camp. It’s tempting to compare them to Late Night Gimp Fight, their predecessors as the fringe’s go-to troupe for “blood, poo and bumholes” (their words) comedy. But Gein’s internal dynamic is more intriguing, and the performances – and the writing – more nuanced. I’d welcome a broadening of their subject range, but this is still a fun hour of unpleasant comedy, and the sketch in which Ed Easton offering a pint to Kath Hughes spirals into an epic Gothic dumbshow of a season in hell is one for the annals.
Elsewhere, Twisted Loaf are operating in comparably dark if far less puerile territory. Ranging from standard clown routines (there’s one where they’re competing to wear the same dress) to satirical sketches (an advertising meeting harvesting ideas from a gibbering idiot), Libby Northedge and Nina Smith’s unflinching brand of buffoonery sometimes draws too deeply on our indulgence. And the sketch that reduces lager-lad speech to a series of near-simian noises is a bit old hat. But there’s something admirable about the show’s withholding of easy charm. Encountering work with such a strong and distinct flavour is one of the pleasures of the comedy smorgasbord that is the Edinburgh fringe.
