The Definitive Guide to Comedy
⭐⭐⭐⭐½ Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland have done it again. Their fourth Fringe production has earned them a fourth Fringe First award from The Scotsman. They can write and tell jokes great and dumb alike. They can clown it up. But this show has less of that, more focused on …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Elouise Eftos is sexy, smart, and funny. “Turns out guys don’t like that.” Fringe audiences and judges do, however, making her a Best Newcomer nominee last year, and “Australia’s First Attractive Comedian” has returned to remind us how we should worship her like a goddess, even if this second-generation …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ For comedian and actor Chris Grace, racism is worse when it’s hack. Grace used this to his comedic advantage in his 2023 Fringe show, Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson, which he adapted into a Dropout special. This time around, it’s not the casting of white movie stars as Asian …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Paddy Young is an undeniable star now. “I used to dream of playing rooms like this,” he says during one late-night set this month at Pleasance Grand. And yet he still has to deal with rejection, whether it’s the couple who got up to leave 15 minutes into his …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fears are funny (weird) in how they can encompass both sides of an issue or outcome. For example, comedian Sarah Roberts says she has a fear of being alone, and yet she also fears people. In her case, Roberts kind of brought that upon herself in the womb. I’ll …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ You can only imagine what the revelers outside the new Beside room must think if they hear some of the “horrible things” bleeding out through the walls into Pleasance Courtyard this August. Frankie Thompson has taken found footage to new heights, and depths, in this showcase where she lip-synchs …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Two summers ago, Demi Adejuyigbe came to Edinburgh promising one back-flip and left Fringe as a Best Newcomer nominee. What to do for an encore? Sell out, obviously! Whether satirically, sincerely, or both, Adejuyigbe desperately wanted to return to the Edinburgh Fringe, and even more desperately didn’t want to …
⭐⭐⭐⭐½ In her biggest, most ambitious show yet, Olga Koch time travels. Figuratively. Koch uses the large stage at Pleasance Courtyard’s Forth to display dates, court citations, funny asides and mood lighting to tell her “one good story” that’s not really about her. It’s about her fateful encounter with a …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bron Lewis knows her demographic: teachers and moms. The Australian comedian has experience with both, having formerly taught high school and currently still raising three children (two daughters, 12 and 10; and a five-year-old son). Plus a new golden retriever, a not-so-new husband who’s been working from home since …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ “If you’re thinking, ‘Huh?!,’ then you are correct.” On the Greek temple at Delphi reads three maxims that come from the oracle: “Know thyself, Nothing in excess, Surety then ruin.” These popular proverbs hang on signs strung up behind Lara Ricote onstage, and she bounds back and forth among …
