Ivo Graham: No Filter
As Ivo Graham acknowledges in the course of his confidently performed and laughter-rich show, he has a few obstacles when getting an audience to like him. For a start, he’s an Old Etonian, a status that many people find troubling at the best of times, let alone in the context of David Cameron’s class-divided Britain. But while he may have lived a life of privilege, Graham seems all at sea when it comes to the basics of ordinary life – especially relationships. We often talk about comedians being old men in young men’s bodies, but Graham seems to be all sorts of people at once – an old man, a confused boy and (on occasion) a sensitive maiden aunt. In fact, the one thing he doesn’t seem to be is a twentysomething who is comfortable in his own skin. But that sense of being an outsider among his peers gives Graham plenty of great material to draw on, and in spite of his high-status background, he seems more than capable of entertaining a mass audience.
Gilded Balloon, Sat; Pleasance Courtyard, Sat & Sun
Joseph Morpugo: Soothing Sounds For Baby
There’s only a couple of days left at the fringe, which means there’s just a few more opportunities to catch this standout show – an eclectic mix of character comedy, sonic trickery and coups de théâtre. The central conceit is pretty straightforward – Morpurgo makes himself a castaway on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs and receives a grilling from Kirsty Young – but what ensues is anything but, as each record he chooses prompts an inspired vignette drawn from the performer’s rich comic imagination, including an extraordinary piano lesson, a rap about golf that puts all other hip-hop spoofs to shame and a remarkably disturbing reinterpretation of the works of AA Milne. Where many character and sketch acts rely on energy and enthusiasm to power them through the hour, Morpurgo gives a proper acting performance that’s as impressive as any you’ll see on the fringe – and the result is a show that as well as being gloriously silly is also oddly moving.
Pleasance Courtyard, Sat to Mon
The Pin: Ten Seconds With The Pin
Over the past few fringes, the biggest trend in sketch comedy has been an embrace of the “meta” – seemingly every other group spends their time doing sketches about the idea of doing sketches. You can see this kind of formal exploration in the cerebral antics of Sheeps, as well as the enjoyably laddish Beasts, but it’s taken to perhaps its greatest extremes by post-Footlights two-piece The Pin. While Alex Owen (blonde, enthusiastic) and Ben Ashenden (tall, mystified) do have some proper jokes (and very good ones they are too), the bulk of their hour is spent playing around (in an increasingly hi-tech manner) with audience expectations of what sketch comedy is. The danger with this kind of approach is that it can pay off big time for comedy nerds while leaving a wider audience cold. Fortunately, Owen and Ashenden have a clownish charm that helps them bring everyone on side.
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