Rating Guide
None = Unmissable
= Unwatchable
Ross
Noble Chickenmaster
Drams None (Excellent)
Venue The Pleasance (Venue 33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Andrew MacNeil
Forget the gothic chickens. Master is the word. Differentiating at glorious
and transcendent length from his set we were taken on a road involving
Britney Spears, a haematologist stalking an Edinburgh night porter via
an Alton Towers for insects. Let us not forget the musical anthem that
wracks Noble's and now our collective souls. The galactic trip of mirth
used as its lodestone the pained front row members. I say pained because
at times rib implosion is a real danger.
The evident release of energy for these buzz bombs of fancy warmly linked
to the mood of the audience inevitably leads to some intakes, by Noble,
of breath. In comes sparkling though less hilarious material on the
Catholic Church and "the hardest men on the planet" who are also appearing
in Edinburgh. An extra show was being put on, pray for more of the same.
Big man, big heart-huge talent.
See it and hum the cryptic tune!
Runs till 28th at 21.00 (22.00)
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Scott
Capurro
Drams None ( Excellent,Unmissable)
Venue Pleasance (Venue 33)
Address The Pleasance
Reviewer Andrew MacNeil
The night after a certain paper reviewed the venom-tongued one from
San Francisco a nubile (to Scott) soon-to-be Marine vouchsafed this
information to Capurro. I later asked the stunned one - six foot plus
of already honed physique how he felt. "I didnae know." He had turned
up on a speculative night out-with mum. This all happened after Jews,
the Welsh, Paisley-home of the most interesting disco this side of Chechenya
had been eviscerated.
This man knows no boundaries and the repeated references and bile placed
on family members points to a permanent crusade against complacency.
This in a world where a new arms race may be starting. As stated the
recruit-then the military came in for heavy barrages. The military barracks-a
gay place without the bar. All that dressing and cleaning buttons. This
interspersed with his prediliction for Hassidic Jews and wanting to
make said boy bleed. He did do likewise to many in the audience-despite
being berated, gently, for none of our number leaving. In the information
and blandness overload the man brought some sharp stakes to wake us
up. See it. (Met Stage Reviewer in this one.."agreed "verdict)
Runs till 28th 2100-2200
...and for a second opinion...
Scott Capurro
Drams
Venue Pleasance One
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Nicola Osborne
Scott Capurro wants you to be shocked by him. He really wants you to
walk out of his show in disgust... doesn't he? Well that's what he says
anyway... Of course more than a few minutes of this finds your natural
limit and if you survive that far what's left to make you laugh or be
remotely interested in what he has to say?
Starting as he means to go on Scott tells you how he wants his grandmother
dead for his inheritance, chats up the cutest/most likely to be utterly
embarrassed guy in the front row and continues on to tell us how Hasidic
Jews give really great head... Now the problem with that is you can
either laugh uproariously at his banishing of taboos, get hugely offended
and walk out , or do as I did noting how similar this is to his previous
material (and his novel "Foul Play" which did genuinely compel and disturb)
and be amazed to be laughing only half as much as your fellow audience
members. And, during the show, I couldn't help but notice that, initially
to my surprise, most of his audience these days is straight which suggests
that sadly he is now being laughed at, rather than with. To be fair
I really like Scott (though I not impressed with his misogyny), the
problem is that it felt like I was on auto-pilot watching the show,
because that's how he was performing. Capurro is also starring in "Resurrecting
Liza" at the festival and I hope and suspect that this is where his
commitment and energies truly lie this year. The one inspired idea was
his ideal man[nequin] on stage, something deliciously delusional was
going on there (as in his novel) and it kept the show above the ordinary,
just hinting at what could have been.
Though he is often bitingly funny - particularly if you love to be shocked
- Scott's badly in need of a new angle and some new material... you'll
get what you'd expect from him but don't hope for much more.
Running until 28th, 21:00
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The
Stand Up Show Alive
Drams
(well it varies each night really!)
Venue Pleasance Cavern (Venue 33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Nicola Osborne
Taking it's basic format and the handy publicity of BBC One's The Stand
Up Show, this is a collection of the better comics at the fringe with
one charming compere warming you up for the three short sets. Although
the content changes all the time you can be fairly certain that most
acts are those already performing at Edinburgh and they are likely to
be the better - or at least most promoted - of the bunch.
To give you an idea of who was on hand for the show I saw, compere was
Phil Davey (utterly lovely he was too), the acts included Addy Borgh
(better without the red nose) and the marvelously surreal Dan Antopolski.
Given the length (3 longish sets + intros/warm-up from your host) the
show's quite a bargain since you're given fairly established acts and
are bound to see at least one you like. Incidentally take note: if you
sit anywhere near the front you may well be in for a little participation
(personally I consider this a bonus but if you're a shy type consider
yourself warned!) though that depends on the acts on offer… best to
talk to the box office to see who'll be around on a given evening. However
whoever's playing you're guaranteed a good few laughs and perhaps a
long public discussion of your particular feelings on whitey fishy vegetarians…
or some such nonsense.
A mix of Reliably funny acts in a chilled out setting.
Running until 28th (except 8th & 15th), at 23:00
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Yllana’s
666
Drams
(good)
Venue Pleasance (Venue 33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Colin Donati
Another of the crop of sensationalist concepts on this year’s Fringe,
this profoundly black take on a ‘men-behaving-badly’ theme uses the
slender pretext of presenting four hardened criminals in a State Penitentiary
as an excuse to explore the secret animalistic depths of the male psyche.
Being all about finding comic mileage in mass murder, gang-rape, electric
chair death-wish games and fantasy penis extension, it makes for quite
a scary show at times.
In an age of reputed male identity crisis in the face of feminism, I
suppose a conscious grotesquerie like this becomes almost inevitable
as a kind of Bacchanalian backlash. 666 of course is the number of ‘the
Beast’. The divide between on-stage ‘beasts’ and poor, vulnerable audience
is uncomfortably established with little more than an invisible electric
barrier. There's no guarantee this barrier can remain intact. And, from
the beginning, this uneasiness is designed to keep us laughing on the
edge of our seats. I was never far away from recognising what we watched
as much more than a series of almost easy ‘dumb-show’ sketches, though
well performed. Should it be more than that? One of its successes, on
its own terms, is that it pulls the stunt off while maintaining our
sympathy (more or less) even when this sympathy is occasionally stretched
to breaking point. This is down to the personality of the performers
and the evident fun they were having. A more serious point of interest
might be the way there is an almost conscious effort to turn the table
on the audience (like so much I’ve seen on the Fringe so far) as when
instances of unguarded audience reaction can sometimes be more uncomfortably
eloquent than anything we have just witnessed from the (studiedly) innocent
performers. By the way, the less said about the shaving scene the better.
Runs till the 28th (not 15th or 21st), at 22.30hrs (additional show
at 00.05 selected nights)
