The Definitive Guide to Comedy
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The first of three consecutive Fringe First award-winning productions from Xhloe Rice and Natasha Rowland is both their most purely clownish hour, and also their most meta. Xhloe and Natasha excel in intricately-choreographed stagecraft. It’s absurdist buffoonery, with balletic grace. And for their most absurd idea yet, they’re mounting …
Kelly McCaughan is an actor, writer, comedian and clown whose show, Catholic Guilt, was nominated for Best Newcomer by the 2023 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and then brought back the following Fringe, where her show received a Best Show nomination from the 2024 ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Originally from outside …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Lara Ricote, the 2022 Best Newcomer, has returned to the Fringe with a new hour exploring her relationship issues, whether it’s the unique one she fosters with each audience, or the uniquely weird one she has with her Argentinian boyfriend, who moved to the Netherlands to be with Ricote, …
⭐⭐⭐½ Father Greg Orian just wants to get back into God’s good graces, so he has dedicated himself to the Catholic church, singing his way through a service but also battling his demons. Specifically, one demon who used to date…Satan? Father Greg is really Natasha Mercado in drag, one of …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Josh Glanc is the silliest of Silly Billies. So when he sings repeatedly about being a “family man,” he knows that we know he’s just having a bit of fun at his own expense. Trying to find out which of us are willing to be cheeky monkeys alongside him. …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ This hour relies on a series of multiple misdirections, which really is the only way to keep a show like this going after the first couple of big reveals. Both of which are forewarned in the official show description: 1) prolonged nudity, and 2) this is a show not …
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Edinburgh’s Best Newcomer winner with “LAID” in 2017, Natalie Palamides’s follow-up, “NATE,” eventually made its way to Netflix as a special presented by Amy Poehler. The first special took the school project of projecting motherhood through practicing maternal instincts with eggs to clownish heights. Her second special showed us …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ There’s something extra ominous about being led through a bar into a dark, damp cave as the clock approaches midnight, receiving a wooden percussive instrument, and having your psychic energies measured by a healer who also happens to be a clown. That this healer clown, this Medicine Woman, is …
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Who wouldn’t want to see “the first ever comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe performed entirely by a horse.” Then you encounter Emily-Anne “Elf” Lyons, most certainly a clown human standing before you, and wonder, just whom does this filly think she’s fooling? And yet, Lyons ain’t lying. …
Bill O’Neill is an actor and clown from Los Angeles whom you may recognize most readily from his frequent appearances in commercials as a Wendy’s employee. But O’Neill’s career goes back to his early teen years, when he scored a major speaking role in the 2008 film, Drillbit Taylor. A member …
