The Definitive Guide to Comedy
**** (out of 5) A late-night showcase at a festival tends to find its most success when it has a strong grip on its premise while maintaining the loosest flexibility to go with the flow, even when and especially if the flow turns into a spill requiring the hosts to …
**** (out of 5) Olivier Martin-Salvan and Pierre Guillois would’ve been movie stars in the silent era a century ago. They evoke more than a bit of Laurel and Hardy, but with even starker contrasts. In this contemporary duo, this Ollie (Martin-Salvan) does most all of the talking while sitting …
**** (out of 5) It’s safe for me to tell you that Max & Ivan’s previous show, Commitment, is now available on YouTube. As for everything else, well, which quadrant would I like to follow? Max claims he’s active safe, while Ivan is passive risk. These opposites made for a …
*** 1/2 (out of 5) At 25, Philipp Kostelecky still looks like the villain in a high-school basketball movie. That might be the Austrian in him. Kostelecky is a mix of Austrain, American and Slovenian. His dad left when Philipp was only 9. Now, his deadbeat dad is merely dead. …
*** 1/2 (out of 5) André de Freitas jokes about being Portugal’s biggest export since cork. Then again, did you even know about Portuguese cork? Can you even name another Portuguese stand-up comedian? To be fair, de Freitas doesn’t so much resemble a young Cristiano Ronaldo as he does a …
**** (out of 5) There’s a big difference between Dad energy and Daddy energy, and Sam Lake is only looking for the latter. This isn’t Lake’s Edinburgh Fringe debut, as he was here last year. And yet this hour still has all the feels of a coming-out party of sorts …
**** 1/2 (out of 5) The Fringe boasts several late-night showcases around Edinburgh where comedy fans can find stand-up, burlesque or some combination of the two. None of these variety hours curates chaos quite like Stamptown can. With Zach Zucker presiding as master of ceremonies in character as horrible throwback …
**** (out of 5) Hungry. Horny. Scared. But enough about the walrus that showed up in Paddy Young’s hometown to epically greet his fellow Northerners for New Year’s. This show is about Young’s big debut. He has big dreams, but before detailing them, he needs us to know how condescending …
**** (out of 5) Liam Withnail’s Fringe show last year revolved around the embarrassing moment when he ran the London marathon only to shit his pants. While talking to his funny friends in Edinburgh, Withnail got the sense that they’d all come to Fringe prepared to deliver more emotionally powerful …
**** (out of 5) In 2016 Zoë Coombs Marr won the top prize for best show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and received a nomination at the Edinburgh Fringe as well, for her “Trigger Warning” show that featured Dave, her male alter-ego edgelord hack comedian. Marr had retired the …
