As the black hole left by the cancelled Edinburgh fringe exerts its gravitational pull, the hankering not only for comedy shows online, but for whole festivals, gets keener. Over the last five evenings (and with one gig, Sofie Hagen’s, still to come), the Upload Comedy festival promised a concentrated hit of the spirit of #edfringe, with some cracking acts “experimenting with brand new formats” – with some success, judging by the handful of shows I saw.
Of course, there’s nothing festive – at all – about sitting at home watching a computer screen. But if Upload can’t simulate the bacchanalian abandon of your Kilkennys, Melbournes and Edinburghs, the creativity and can-do attitude are much in evidence. The four-way Zoom and sketch show supplied by Fern Brady, Kemah Bob, Sikisa and Alison Spittle was a cheerfully DIY case in point, inspired by a disastrous audition they experienced together at the start of the lockdown. They recreate it here – somewhat scrappily, it must be said – alongside webcammed skits mocking misogynistic podcasts and quarantine ennui.
For good and bad, it’s like a window on to a private chat between friends – intimacy being the secret superpower of Zoom-era comedy. Tessa Coates runs a private tarot session for her viewers, as part of her meandering but likable solo about surviving lockdown – which includes a winning anecdote about her recent effort to break America, and stay sane while doing so. Her solicitous style is perfect for online, being as concerned with making sure we’re comfortable as making us laugh out loud. It’s a genteel hour on tea towels as presents and Fabergé’s testicular eggs.
Just as intimate is Jordan Brookes’s POV set. Across 50 minutes at home, with flatmate Luke underscoring on guitar, our host worries at the 64,000-dollar “Am I a good person?” question and relates the “almost toxic amount of self-care” he bought with his Edinburgh Comedy award prize money. There’s an is-he-being-serious? shaggy-dog story about his grandparents and some dancing with a boomerang on his head. It’s comedy of the bleakest variety, with seldom anything so straightforward as a joke.
The effect is to disarm – and disconcert – you with almost brutal levels of honesty. Think Kim Noble, but without the multimedia trickery – which is supplied elsewhere by Mat Ewins. Ewins’s retrospective of a career’s worth of daft videos – hosted and operated by the man himself, sat at a bank of hardware – is a festival highlight. Maybe it’s because the format gives us some escape from the claustrophobia of lockdown, and of lockdown comedy. But mainly it’s down to the high quality of his lo-fi films – which co-star John Kearns, Richard Gadd and sundry comedy pals.
There’s Bond spoof Ewins Only Live Twice, faux haunted house docu Shhhecrets, or the interview with Kearns’s wannabe survival instructor Dominic Scorpions – in each, a stoopid sense of humour and often painstaking tech wizardry combine to joyous effect. Ewins has an unfair advantage, of course – this is well-worked material, whereas the other Upload shows are speculative try-outs. Either way, it’s a delectably dopey hour, which leaves you thinking that, surely, Ewins’s videos are a TV show waiting to happen. And what response could simulate the Edinburgh fringe experience more closely than that?
* The Upload Comedy festival runs until 25 June.
