Edinburgh comedy reviews: the funniest shows at the 2024 Fringe

Our comedy critics review the funniest stand-up and sketch shows in Edinburgh, including Andrew Doherty and Vir Das

Where: The Stand (1)When: 6.30pm (also 1.15pm, 26 Aug)Until: Aug 26 (not 12)
In a nutshell: Few comedians are politically clued up and quick-witted enough to be able to whip up material on the riots that have seized the UK this week. But that old south London firebrand Mark Thomas – 61, and rejuvenated by newfound love, we learn – proves our dependable guide to the chaos. Well, up to a point; those seeking a detailed, even-handed analysis need to look elsewhere. He offers a characteristically expletive-laden view, which holds no truck with the idea of these being legitimate protests: ““We’re concerned citizens.” No, you’re not – concerned citizens write letters to newspapers and sign petitions, at worst they make t–ts of themselves on Question Time. They don’t try to burn hotels with human beings in them – that’s the work of fascism.” 
Deprived of hope things will get better, these people, he avows, just want someone in Parliament to represent their grievances by ‘flicking the v’s’ to MPs. His battle-hardened advice, delivered with partial tongue in socialist cheek, is for “Angela Rayner … to get behind Lee Anderson and chair the f—er”. He even admits to wanting the police to make full use of their batons. Disagree with his perspective if you will, but few come close to Thomas for trenchant spleen and satirical purpose; the strong ratio of hard-hitting matter to gag-rich mirth is a feat that makes other stand-up look idling and irrelevant. Whether denouncing Starmer’s Labour, rejoicing at the Tories’ implosion and with it the Rwanda scheme, Thomas hereby renews his mandate to rant. DC
Where: Summerhall (TechCube)When: 9.30pmUntil: Aug 26 (not 12, 19)
In a nutshell: Solo shows are 10 a penny at the Edinburgh festival but this feels like one in a million –  an hour of innate fascination, dramatic drive and propulsive physicality in which the comedian Adam Riches proves his theatrical credentials in spades with a knock-out athletic performance as Jimmy Connors. 
Riches’ inspired idea is to show the US tennis legend at 39, at an hour of faded prowess, gathering self-doubt and against all odds comeback: the 1991 US Open when he was initially two sets down to Patrick McEnroe (John’s younger brother) but turned it around in the middle of third set, going on to win after more than four hours of play, and then reach the semifinals. 
The audience file past Riches – got up in tennis whites, sitting, towel over head – on arrival but after that there’s barely a sedentary, still or tension-free moment, as this self-styled “bad boy of the base-line” turns it round, miming each shot with squinting, sweaty, racquet-swinging intensity. The piece re-affirms Connors’ game-changing entertainment value, probes his inner demons (and the pushy mom whose directives he has internalised) and proffers a vision of humanity contending with that unslayable opponent – Time – in a way that feels almost lyrically profound. “In real-life you don’t just lose a match, you lose a loved one, then another, then a mother and pretty soon everything you once were is gone,” he muses. No wonder, given what he represents, that we’re soon rooting and cheering for him, even as he macho-misbehaves (pelvic-thrusting towards the front-row in triumph), finally rising to our feet to ovate him, like his victory is ours. DC
Where: Traverse 1When: 9.30pm Until: Aug 25
In a nutshell: Sometimes the old jokes are the best, and the burlesque act known as the “half-and-half” is one of the oldest there is. For perhaps a hundred years, crowds have roared at the sight of two lovers played by one clown in a costume split down the middle (lipstick and frock on the left, half a beard and one trouser on the right). They dance and squabble and kiss, hands begin to wander, and clothes come flying off en route to the bedroom.
Natalie Palamides, one of the most thrillingly original comedians working today, has taken this ancient vaudeville routine and turned it into the must-see farce of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe: a spot-on homage to 1990s romantic movies, less a spoof than a chaotic love-letter to schmaltz.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999 – Y2K, baby! – and on-and-off couple Mark and Christina are arguing outside a party. Swivelling from left to right, Palamides cheekily side-eyes the audience throughout their spat, as if encouraging us to choose a side.
Flashbacks take us through their fractious relationship, beginning with their Hollywood meet-cute; that moment, when the pair bump into each other, spilling their Starbucks cups, is just one brilliant bit of physical comedy among many.
Palamides never writes scripts for her shows, but riffs them into existence through workshops and semi-improvised gigs. Given that, it’s remarkable how well-knit Weer feels, from its slick costume changes to its clever callbacks (a slow-detonating joke about a speech impediment manages to be simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking). Overrunning its advertised 75 minutes, it ought to feel as baggy as Mark’s ‘90s grunge jeans, but there’s not a dull moment.
I’ve been a fan of Palamides since her 2017 Fringe debut, Laid – a surrealist satire about the pressure put on women to have children, involving hundreds of smashed eggs. Nate (later a Netflix special) followed in 2018; a taboo-busting interactive hour about sexual consent, it left me thinking that here was a performer who could do absolutely anything – except make a show with commercial appeal.
Six years later, Palamides has proved me wrong: Weer is a bonafide mainstream hit. I haven’t seen a bit of Fringey tomfoolery so obviously ready for a West End transfer since Liz Kingsman’s One Woman Show.
A leopard doesn’t change its spots: it’s still a Palamides gig, which means you can still expect swearing, blood, death, sex and copious nudity (brace yourself for Mark’s rubber appendage), while a messy onslaught of prop comedy leaves the stage looking like a bomb site. But it’s the closest thing she’s ever made to a show for the whole family. 
She’s dialled down her signature audience interaction from terrifying to merely mischievous, and thematically Weer only takes us to the edge of dark waters where Nate and Laid nose-dived straight in. Mark and Christina’s relationship might be toxic, but no more so than most 1990s romcom couples. They clash like Tom and Jerry, and the final act’s descent into Looney Tunes madness somehow contrives a heavenly feel-good finale. TFS
Tickets: traverse.co.uk
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs)When: 5.30pmUntil: Aug 24 (not 12, 19)
In a nutshell: Anna Akana has enough extraordinary stories to fill six or seven Fringe shows. Packing them all into this debut, however, makes for an hour that feels like it’s only just skimming the surface of any of them. 
One theme running through It Gets Darker is the pressures facing Asian-American families in general, and her own grief-stricken family in particular. The actress and comedian’s teenage sister killed herself in a year when adolescent suicide was so prevalent in the US that there was a nationwide shortage of child-sized coffins. Meanwhile, her short-sighted, retirement-age father one day announced to the family that he was leaving to fight for Ukraine – then skipped, giggling, out of the room, before going off to do just that.
She also touches on her mental health conditions, which include Exploding Head Syndrome – a real thing, astonishingly – and intrusive suicidal thoughts (she nicknames the voice in her head “Hitler”, which makes resisting his advice easier). But the most jaw-dropping anecdote involves a deranged stalker, who sent her death-threats before turning up at her house. In a characteristically dark gag, Akana finds a silver lining to that ordeal – it helped with her depression, as “nothing cures your suicidal ideation faster than somebody wanting to do it for you.”
Akana is best known for making YouTube videos about mental health – a sideline which has evidently shaped her stand-up style; reassuringly confident, yet stuck in a calming mid-gear, a little lacking in variety and spontaneity.
Always compelling but rarely laugh-out-loud funny, the show somehow adds up to less than the sum of its remarkable parts. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Attic)When: 7.15pmUntil: Aug 26 (not 12)
In a nutshell: Here’s a clever idea. Abby Wambaugh’s delightful Fringe debut – a blend of stand-up and sketch comedy – supposedly gives us 17 wholly unrelated skits, each the start of a different show. In fact, it’s an autobiography in disguise, where every section ties in thematically to a milestone in Wambaugh’s life: first trying stand-up, moving to Holland, pregnancy, a miscarriage, parenthood, and returning to making shows after years of thinking “I’d never make anything except except breastmilk”.
Wambaugh is in the same poky attic room where Lorna Rose Treen (see below) had her breakthrough last year – and this show’s interactive moments have a similarly childlike sense of mischief, pulling up people from the front-row for an oddball take on parkour, or introducing us to the joys of mime basketball.
Too many Fringe comedies struggle to crowbar in tragedy, segueing awkwardly from breezy stand-up to the now seemingly obligatory “sad bit” near the end. Wambaugh circumvents that problem: the most heartfelt sections here are at once sincere and ironic, arriving via a spoof of New York storytelling shows such as The Moth and a David Sedaris-style essay, while the channel-hopping format means it’s natural to leap abruptly between a crushing revelation and, say, an uproarious impression of a Hoover. Utterly charming. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Attic)When: 11pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12)
In a nutshell: Camp-as-Christmas estate agent and father-to-be Kaelan Trough has gathered his nearest and dearest (that’s us) for a gender-reveal party. Neither the child nor Kaelan’s husband Jeremy has arrived yet, so to kill time Kaelan begins telling the story of how he fell in love – and his brush with a centuries-old demonic cult on a remote island.
Horror-comedy is a tricky genre to pull off, but this well-written slice of Wicker Man-flavoured farce from Andrew Doherty (of the sketch troupe Megan from HR) serves up both sides of the equation with aplomb, contriving a couple of genuine jump-scares in between the laughs.
The show takes a little while to find its feet, as does Doherty’s performance. Squawking, narcissistic Kaelan is a grating narrator at first – a one-note creation who really needs a comic foil to avoid becoming monotonous. Things pick up considerably once a flashback introduces us to the cursed island and its eerie denizens (allowing Doherty to slip into different roles, including a hilarious back-and-forth with a gruff boatman); as events take a darker turn, we even begin to warm to Kaelan, unloveable idiot though he might be.
Gay Witch Sex Cult isn’t a perfect show, but it’s clever, impish fun, and Doherty is clearly a talent to watch. At the very least, it’s easily the best Fringe show about a gay witch sex cult since, well, the last one (the 2023 debut from Lachlan Werner – who is, incidentally back at the Fringe with a new work-in-progress). TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Beside)When: 6.05pmDates: Aug 3-25 (not 13)
“I joined a Christian cult when I was 13 and escaped when I was 26… this is my story”, announces Spring Day, a drawling, beaming survivor of an American upbringing that has left battle-scars alongside an ability to see the funny side. The odd thing about Day’s hour is that when she’s being level about her life-story, it’s interesting, eye-opening and entertaining stuff – especially the rural midwestern childhood which saw her contend with cerebral palsy and befriend the VCR while her parents toiled, and tried, and failed, to work out their own issues: “By the time I was 13, my mum had hit me so much it’s a miracle I’m not doing burlesque”. 
Church was seized on as her salvation but gave her the usual hang-ups about sex and eternal damnation and the higher she climbed towards goodness the more apparent the shortcomings of her fellow Bible-bashers became. You almost want more painterly detail on all of this – when Day reaches for knock-out gags, with a disproportionately hefty delivery, the punchline too often lands wide. 
But it’s no easy task to hold a room, her warmth isn’t in doubt and if she moves into sermon mode that’s understandable. “I just wanted to belong to a family that had the capacity to give a shit about me,” she realised; that it took her so long to glean something so obvious speaks volumes. And perhaps explains too why there’s a hell of a lot of mad-eyed religion to be found both Stateside and worldwide. DC
Where: Pleasance Dome (King Dome)When: 8pmUntil: Aug 16
In a nutshell: “You understand that this ends horribly for you, right?” the cop asked Vir Das, shortly after confiscating his passport. The biggest star in India’s burgeoning stand-up scene, Das had a mixed bag of a year in 2023: he won an Emmy and played the Apollo, but was hauled into a police station on spurious charges, denounced by politicians, and even branded a “terrorist” for stand-up routines criticising the state of affairs in his home country. Angry mobs burnt effigies of him outside comedy clubs.
The flack he’s received makes British debates about free speech look a little parochial. But the rapturous reception (from a largely Indian crowd) in Edinburgh shows how much appetite there is for his work, despite any manufactured controversy.
This show’s first half – a clutch of observational routines, some slightly hacky jokes about vaping and Gen Z slang, and a winning skit imagining Hitler from his dog’s perspective – is solid enough, and he has a great riff that about that over-worked topic, gender-neutral pronouns. (If you’re frequently warned that “they” are out to get you, he jokes, the idea that “they” might refer to just one person is a blessed relief.) His charisma and confidence carries the material, even when it’s a little middle-of-the-road. 
But The Fool reaches new heights, both literally and figuratively, when Das climbs up into the audience, away from the mic and camera onstage, to speak from the heart about all the reasons – personal and political – why speaking from the heart can be so difficult. “Can we be honest?” he asks, and in the brief silence afterwards has the whole crowd hanging on his next word. Das manages to make one of the Fringe’s larger venues feel intimate – no mean feat. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Beside)Time: 8.45pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12)
In a nutshell: As he told The Telegraph in July, John Tothill recently took part in a medical trial for malaria. It didn’t go as planned, and his brush with death provides a solid-gold ending to what’s surely one of the funniest hours of stand-up at this year’s Fringe. (Twenty-seven shows in, it’s the funniest I’ve seen so far.) But what a journey he takes to reach that anecdote, madly (and delightfully) pinballing all over the place.
Tothill is both a louche, hard-partying libertine and a primary-school teacher – and his adorably camp, effervescent stand-up style plays into both roles: patronising the slower pupils on one side of the room, dropping outrageous compliments to those on the other.
He spends the first 20 minutes promising to tell us the story of an obscure 1950s medical experiment on rats – but that routine’s endlessly postponed, sidetracked by his fast, flirty crowd work and own skittish thoughts. The atmosphere of fizzing spontaneity he creates is, of course, pure artifice, the seemingly off-the-cuff diversions all carefully planned, but each detour leads to the next so beautifully it’s impossible to see the joins. The hour’s neatly tied together by a carpe-diem message (like his 2023 debut, the set is essentially a geeky cri-de-coeur about hedonism). It’s hard to believe this is only Tothill’s second show; he’s completely in command of his distinctive, mischievous comic voice. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema)Time: 1.50amUntil: Aug 25 (not 11, 18)
In a nutshell: Every year, as costs spiral, the Fringe becomes less Fringey. Yet its weird spirit lives on, if you know where to find it. Elsewhere you can see TV stars for £30, but in the darkest depths of the Free Fringe you can watch a man dressed as a whoopee cushion slowly destroy himself, one slice of cheese at a time. 
Mark Dean Quinn’s 2024 show – which is, in fact, his 2023 show under a new title –  starts around 2am, drawing a crowd of waifs and strays, drunken tourists looking to get out of the rain, and the odd hardcore devotee. (Last year, apparently, one came for six consecutive nights.)
It begins conventionally enough. The conceit is that he’s lost his voice – a conceit he demolishes repeatedly, by telling us about it every few minutes – and so he’s delivering his show via pre-written cue cards, a la Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. This generates around 20 minutes of sight gags and whimsical audience interaction, before things take a stranger turn. A Tommy Cooper-ish spoof magic trick – a very funny one – somehow devolves into a harrowing performance-art stunt, as over the next hour or more Quinn very slowly eats four very large blocks of cheese.
Why? For God’s sake, why? The heckles – of which there are many – mostly concern his health. Quinn has a genuine gift for dealing with hecklers, which would set him up well if he chose to use his talents for stand-up, rather than for this bizarre, attritional ordeal. There are, inevitably, lulls, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a great many laughs, too. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but when I finally staggered out into the street at 3.15am, I was left full of joie de vivre. I’m not sure I’d recommend it, per se, but I’m glad it exists. TFS
Tickets: free, unticketed. Details: freefringe.org.uk
Where: Underbelly, Cowgate (Belly Dancer)When: 8.55pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12)
In a nutshell: This is an unexpected pleasure. An hour in the company of “the RaveRend” (Ben Welch, arriving in a cloud of dry ice, with glitter-bedecked cassock and beard) and his deadpan sidekick “Trev” (Lawrence Cole, noddingly intent at keyboards and musical gadgets) surely ranks as the Fringe’s biggest feelgood sensation. 
The duo promise to put us through a step programme to enlightenment, guaranteeing we’ll leave “never sad again”. The bonkers route to escaping the “rat-race ring-road of life” includes closing our eyes during a mass meditation to visualise meeting our “chicken mother” and intoning the mantra: “I am ready, I am strong, I am feeling myself like I never have before…” 
Preposterous as it sounds, this simple spoof of spiritual uplift and insta-positivity, underpinned by gospel-style wailing and preacher-like exhortations, as well as live musical looping, manages both to laugh at itself and forge a genuine sense of collective transcendental release. “We wanted to make a show to make everyone happy while the world falls apart,” they explain at the unifying climax, which sees the DIY congregation pile on stage and decide the ending. Mission accomplished. DC
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Gilded Balloon at the Museum (Auditorium)When: 1.15pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12-13)
In a nutshell: Her agent must have been miffed. In June, a newspaper ran an interview with Mhairi Black to ask what one of the UK’s youngest-ever MPs planned to do after leaving parliament. The article ran to thousands of words, but forgot to answer the question: she’s trying stand-up. 
Mere months ago Black was the SNP’s deputy leader. Now she’s in an Edinburgh Fringe lunchtime slot at the Gilded Balloon with Politics Isn’t for Me, a show sandwiched between a magician and something called “Primary School Assembly Bangers Live!”.
If Black forgot to plug her show – a rookie error, as any novice comedian will tell you – it turns out she didn’t need the additional publicity. The month’s run is already sold out, and on the first Friday of the Fringe she was greeted with protracted applause as soon as she appeared onstage. 
Although the blurb promises “brutally honest” revelations, this solid hour’s focus is the humdrum slog of being an MP, sitting in the Commons for seven or eight hours at a time, barred from getting up even to use the bathroom. “Everybody pocket-munches,” she explains, giving a memorable impression of Ian Paisley Jr leaning over to ask her: “Do you wanna sweetie?”
Surprisingly, there’s little anger here. Score-settling is kept till the very end – she names and shames two MPs who criticised her while she was on sick-leave. Her fiercest critique is reserved for Westminster itself, from the archaic lobby-voting system to the building’s physical decline. 
The show’s entertaining middle section feels like a guided tour from a mischievous janitor: mind the broken window, look out for the loose flooring. As she rightly points out, “if it was any other building, health and safety would shut it in a heartbeat”. Here are the buckets, catching drops from the leaking roof. Here’s the cafeteria, its floor peppered with mouse-droppings. (We’re treated to photos).Oh, and here’s the lobby bathroom where Black hid to delay a vote on Gaza, ending up locked in a toilet cubicle with a Conservative MP who’d had the same idea.
Comedy shows lacking actual comedy are often disparaged as mere Ted Talks. But this “Ned talk” swerves that criticism by remembering to keep up a consistent gag-count, delivered with the confidence familiar from her time in the Commons. Anyone already favourably disposed to Black can add a star to the rating above; anyone who can’t stand her should dock one. But the merely curious, hoping for an hour’s educational entertainment, won’t leave disappointed. Black may end up back in Westminster one day, but as a comedy critic, I’d rather see her aiming for a less dingy venue, with fewer drunken hecklers. Perhaps the Frog and Bucket. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive)When: 7.35pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 14)
In a nutshell: It’s a joy to have Ed Night back – which is a surprise, as I’d never previously thought of him as joyful. Night was the Angry Young Man of the 2018 Fringe, making his name with a dark, edgy show that called out Russell Brand as a wrong’un, declaring loudly what others at the time were only whispering. 
He’s always been a thoughtful writer, but for this welcome comeback he’s used that formidable intelligence to see how many dumb jokes it’s possible to cram into an hour. “There are 240 punchlines in this show,” he says. If anything, that’s an under-estimate – and at least a hundred of them had me roaring.
He touches on painful topics – side-effects of his antidepressants, a cancer scare – but with zero self-pity; it’s all just grist to the gag-mill, in between thoughts on eating Lego, obsessing over waterfowl, and adopting an emotional-support ant. “I’ll sell that one to Milton Jones,” he says, after a particularly surreal one-liner. 
There are a few glimpses of the old provocateur – there’s a bracing routine on how therapy-speak has been appropriated by “ephebophiles”, leading to an unsettling sight-gag later – but for the most part this is a remarkably feel-good hour.
The more poetic lines (“time carved alcoves out of my experience, and left statues there”) come sandwiched between routines that are knowingly cheesy – yet just as knowingly well-crafted. He even wrings something new out of that hoary old stand-up chestnut, the supermarket till. (“Self-checkout material – isn’t that a bit hack?” he says afterwards, heckling himself, then grins. “Was Van Gogh the first person to paint a flower?”)
Night’s change of style might be down to his recent change of career, moving away from live stand-up to become an online “content creator” (a phrase he admits has the same unappealing ring as “refuse collector” or “sex worker”). But he really belongs on stage. He’s in The Hive – the free Fringe’s worst-smelling venue – and owns it like it’s the Palladium. Even when both the room’s microphones broke, he handled the tech upset like a pro.
There’s no overarching theme here, no grand manifesto, just a pay-what-you-want hour of belly-laughs – and that’s more than enough. TFS
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Monkey Barrel 4)When: 2.10pmUntil: Aug 10 & 23 only (in rep with other shows by John Luke Roberts)
In a nutshell: There’s a world where Morrissey followed Meat is Murder with the less successful Salt and Vinegar Crisps Are Embezzlement; in another world, Evil Knievel is called Morally-Ambivalent Knorrelly-Ambivalent. 
John-Luke Roberts knows about all these worlds, and many more, because he’s opened a portal to parallel dimensions in his tumble-dryer – and brought along the machine (and the one-liners) to prove it. I’ll forgive him for frequently checking his notes – with hundreds of gags all starting with exactly the same set-up, this show must be a nightmare to remember. 
In recent years, Roberts has produced some of the cleverest and most inventive shows on the Fringe. Blending pure idiocy, poignant musings on failed relationships and quips about quantum physics, his latest stand-up hour is another high-concept treat. TFS 
[Reviewed at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. John-Luke Roberts is reviving his last 10 Edinburgh Shows, on alternate days, as John-Luke Roberts: John-Luke-a-Palooza, until Aug 25. Details: impatientproductionsuk.com]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Assembly George Square StudiosWhen: 9.40pmUntil: Aug 25
In a nutshell: Of all the culture-war stories to have come out of America in recent years, the oddest might be last summer’s Bud Light fiasco. Budweiser sent free beer to minor celebrities – including a novelty can for a young influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, who posted about it on her Instagram page, where one might have imagined it would be seen only by her followers.
You’d expect any backlash to have come from Mulvaney’s fans, duped into drinking that godawful dishwater. This is not what happened. Instead, as Mulvaney is transgender, her video prompted worldwide headlines and a boycott. Budweiser factories faced bomb threats. Pop singer Kid Rock filmed himself firing a gun at their beer. The years leading up to that debacle – and what came after – are the subject of Faghag, Mulvaney’s entertaining and highly polished Edinburgh Fringe debut.
In a prologue, we meet Mulvaney in angel wings – a ditzy, clueless soul in heaven awaiting re-incarnation. Born into a boy’s body, she’s aware from the outset there’s been a mistake. (A droll running joke imagines her being prescribed a pill called “Twink” to appease her mother, who finds the idea of a gay son easier to swallow than a transgender daughter).
Mulvaney’s a committed performer, who throws everything into the show – embracing the crowd, hugging fans and posing for selfies before the hour starts. But for all her charisma, Faghag is easier to admire than love.
Some threads felt under-explored: I’d have liked to know more about her conflicted Catholicism – jokily shrugged off, for the most part, but addressed in a brief moment of sincerity. “In the early days of transition,” she says, “I’d never felt so close to God.”
With its lavish all-pink Barbie Dreamhouse set, it’s a remarkably high-budget production by Fringe standards. The programme lists a team of around 50 people, including voice-over cameos from the likes of Simon Callow and Alan Cumming. Three credited songwriters (including Grammy-winner Abigail Barlow) between them offer only three or four songs, none especially memorable, the first arriving so late into the show it’s jokingly treated as a plot twist.
The first half whizzes through her childhood – Catholic schooldays, a spat with her mother (a funny skit imagines this as a WWE grudge match), first awkward romance, etc – but the show really finds its satirical teeth when it reaches her abrupt rise to fame after she began posting content about her transition, and the weird commodification of trans people in the 2020s.
Mulvaney imagines herself stumbling into a chat show – “wait, am I the guest?” – where she’s declared “the new face of trans palatability”, and drowned in brand-ambassador deals. She’s even asked to interview Joe Biden. Ever the ingénue, she agrees: “I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but I’d feel weird saying no.”
A creepy TV host (also Mulvaney; she appears via video-screen as half a dozen supporting characters) gushes that “all the hottest celebrity women are trading in their twinks for a slightly edgier companion.” Those celebrity “friends”, of course, drop her following the first whiff of controversy.
Being a well-known trans person online, Faghag suggests, involves weaving a course between Scylla and Charybdis: angry trolls to the Right, virtue-signalling corporations looking for a fashionable mascot to the left. Mulvaney’s conclusion – attributing her rise-then-fall to “late-stage capitalism and misogyny” – is largely true, but like much in this breezy, glossy show, it also feels a little too neat. TFS
Tickets: 0131 623 3030; assemblyfestival.com
Where: Assembly George Square Studios (Studio Three)When: 10.55pmUntil: Aug 8-12 only
In a nutshell: This smart, slippery concoction is not at all what it initially claims to be. Affably greeting us each with a warm “Hello!” as we file in, Asian-American Fringe newcomer Chris Grace (“Chinese, gay, and fat – what are the chances?”) introduces it as a tribute to his favourite actress, Scarlett Johansson; cue a row of glam wigs across the back of the stage, in readiness. Before long, however, the fraught matter of her playing a necessarily Japanese character in the 2017 blockbuster Ghost in the Shell comes up, while Grace’s repeated insistence that “This is not a hit piece” acquires the acidulous insincerity of Mark Antony’s refrain “And Brutus is an honourable man…”. For the show is, in fact, an impassioned but always entertaining takedown of racial pre-conception and “whitewashing”, one that also, in terms of structure, starts to fold in on itself like a particularly contorted Möbius strip, even collapsing at one point in an avalanche of absurdist verbiage. In short, an unusual combination of genuine surprises, sharp wit and food for thought. MM
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance (Beyond)When: 8pmUntil: Aug 25
In a nutshell:  If a week is a long time in politics, then a year has represented aeons in the life of Matt Forde, the most topically incisive impersonator on the block (whose political podcast is a must-listen). At the end of 2023’s festival, he went for a check-up after experiencing pain in his left leg, and was diagnosed with cancer at the base of his spine. 
“I’m alive and cancer-free,” he says, beaming, at the start to cheers but the physical cost has been immense – he’s reliant on a walking-stick and discloses some of the wince-making details of the surgery, which affected his bladder, bowels and much else besides. 
Anyone who can see the funny side of having to live with a colostomy bag (“I’ve saved a fortune in bog roll!”) deserves a medal, but what’s even more impressive is that Forde, 41, doesn’t devote his hour to his medical travails – instead, he alludes to them in passing (and to increasingly poignant effect) while showing that he hasn’t lost his nerve in taking the political class to task. 
His anatomisation of the many maddening deficiencies of gauche Sunak (skewered for his election campaign), nasal Starmer, starey Miliband, gobby Rayner, lordly Farage, plus Reform’s bovver boy Lee Anderson – with no blushes spared the SNP either – is a tonic; and while I hesitate to say he has a spring in his step, his riff about the near-assassinated Trump and what Blair would have said in his shoes is exemplary in its vocal accuracy and political acumen. 
It’s laugh-a-minute stuff, underpinned by the kind of wisdom and natural resilience our leaders could learn from. He was always impressive, but he deserves his inevitable standing-ovation as never before. DC
Tickets: pleasance.co.uk
Where: Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly)When: 6.40pmUntil: Aug 21
In a nutshell: Belgian, I’m told, though as plummily English-sounding as it is possible to be, Rosalie Minnitt is not the first young character comedian to serve up a cod-Austenesque period romp at the Fringe, but she may well be the most energetic. This show – at heart, a single-hander play, but with with lots of good-natured audience interaction to lift it closer to the realms of stand-up – sees the Fringe debutante deliver, at breakneck speed, and rather in the manner of a brattish, precociously articulate eight-year-old, the picaresque tale of the titular Lady Clementine and her giddy quest to find true love by her 27th birthday. She packs the show with tart jokes and knowing anachronisms (such as a nice little dig at the Arts Council), and, beneath its riotous exterior, is making plenty of salient points here about male and female romantic assumptions and expectations. But it’s her absolutely barnstorming performance and complete mastery of her material that really sweep the whole thing along. By the end, you wonder what more this dynamo could possibly have done in the pursuit of showing her audience a good time, and can only applaud her for it. MM
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Doonstairs)When: 10pmUntil: Aug 25
In a nutshell: Remember 1980s text-based adventures? The unforgiving likes of Zork and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Game? You’d type “Go north” or “Fight troll” into your computer, and hope not to die. No? Well, no worries: you needn’t have played one to enjoy this deranged spoof. 
One at a time, audience volunteers are pitted against the Pythonesque illogic of John Robertson’s multiple-choice escape-room game, hoping to win £1000, or a range of lesser prizes. (On press night, these trophies included a pineapple and a baffled guest comedian, Lorna Rose Treen). It’s very funny, very odd, and very, very loud.
I first saw The Dark Room in a Free Fringe basement more than a decade ago. Since then it’s toured the world, becoming a genuine cult sensation, with die-hard followers; it’s a Rocky Horror Show for nerds. I was hesitant about revisiting it. After years of the same shtick, would Robertson just be going through the motions? 
The answer, thankfully, is no. As the evil gamesmaster, he’s a force of nature. Dressed in the leather and spikes of a Mad Max villain, roaring like the son of Brian Blessed and Nick Helm, he stalks the stage in near-darkness while shining a torch into his wild-eyed face. Robertson has a real flair for crowd work. He throws around foul-mouthed putdowns like confetti. He risks life and limb by climbing some 15 feet of crowd-barrier, just to insult a punter from close-range. As just one sample, here’s his warm greeting to any Gen-Z’ers in the audience: “Understand this, pr—s! I have personal problems older than you! I have tamagotchis older than you, and I like them BETTER! And they’re DEAD!” Reader, I howled. This is definitely not a children’s show, but Robertson is, alarmingly, doing a family-friendly spin-off at 5.30pm each day for brave tots. Lord help them. TFS
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: 0131 622 6552; gildedballoon.co.uk
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Grand)When: 11.30pmUntil: Aug 15-17 & 22-24 only
In a nutshell: Stamptown (the company behind some of the best shows at this year’s Fringe) hosts a mixed-bill show that feels less like a comedy night than a party; the kind of party you wake up from three days later, in another country, handcuffed to a lamppost. Expect to see half-a-dozen outlandish clown, burlesque and circus acts, all interrupted by a gang of bubble-blowing loons in purple morph suits, on roller-blades.
The night I went featured a stomach-churning bouffon routine from Natalie Palamides, and a set from showbiz’s most unlikely triple-threat Sikisa (a stand-up, professional immigration lawyer, and international burlesque star). Zach Zucker – usually half of the double act Zach & Viggo, alongside this year’s Britain’s Got Talent winner – hosts in character as his washed-up American comedian alter-ego “Jack Tucker”. Always on the brink of a breakdown, and at war with an overzealous tech guy blasting naff sound-effects from the tech booth, he creates an atmosphere of barely controlled chaos. If you’re only in town for one night, this is the late-night cabaret to see. TFS
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Forth), plus extra show at Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond), 6.30pm on Aug 25When: 5.30pm on Aug 17 & 8.30pm on Aug 21 Until: Aug 17, 21 & 25 only
In a nutshell: In 2023, The Telegraph ranked Kieran Hodgson one of the funniest comedians of this century. Reading that list, anyone who missed the terrific trilogy of shows he staged from 2015-18 might well have muttered “Kieran who?” (even if he’s lately found a morsel of mainstream fame, thanks to his viral lockdown videos and a sitcom role in Two Doors Down). 
But now he’s back on stage, doing what he does best, with another cleverly structured show weaving his love of geeky trivia and gift for voices into a slick, sweet hour of autobiographical storytelling, peppered with impressions of politicians (his Gordon Brown is dead-on) and half-forgotten celebrities (music hall star Harry Lauder, anyone?). 
For his sitcom job, Hodgson upped sticks from London “tae Glasgae”, and Big in Scotland is his mischievous, ribbing love-letter to his adopted home. He initially balked at leaving the capital (“No way was I moving to Scotland! I was destined for greater things!”) until a personal epiphany, when a friend pointed out that he could be a bit of an unlikeable Clever Dick. Why not use this move as a chance to ditch “English Kieran”, and reinvent his personality? He would become more Scottish than the Scots, and the simple folk of that wee, dreich, drab country would surely be grateful to have him on their side. Or so he thought.
Hodgson pulls off a very clever balancing-act here, alternately puncturing and playing into his slight air of smugness. He re-enacts awkward conversations (real or invented) between his slightly pompous past self and various Scots who put him in his place, whether he’s patronising them over local politics or demanding vegan haggis in a rural pub. 
He brings his interlocutors to life with meticulous regional accents, from Edinburgh to North Uist – but also gives us his own earlier self’s hilariously clumsy attempt at a generic Scottish brogue. We follow his journey, as he tries on different versions of himself – and different ideas about Scotland – before rejecting each in turn. Scotland, he realises, is too various, thrawn and contradictory to fit any generalisation about it – a moral that plays well to the enthusiastic Edinburgh crowd. This charming show reminded me of the poet Hugh MacDiarmid’s great line: “Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?” TFS
Tickets: pleasance.co.uk
Where: Pleasance Dome (10Dome)When: 9.50pmUntil: Aug 12
In a nutshell: Judging the 2022 Funny Women Awards, I was knocked sideways by a young character comic called Lorna Rose Treen, who won both main prizes and has since racked up millions of views on Tiktok. Off the back of all that, her Fringe debut sold out its month-long run. Could it possibly live up to expectations?
The answer, thankfully, is yes. The stage is dominated by a giant mound of laundry; to cover her costume changes, Treen dives into it, crawls under it, or stands half-buried in it like Winnie in Happy Days. Dwarfed by the pile, she’s like a toddler playing in a dress-up box; it’s a perfect symbol for the joyous silliness of the hour.
The crew of misfits she embodies include a kind of feral Richard Curtis heroine hiding in your garden; a dolphin preening in a mirror; and “prolific author Sally Rooney” reading from her new children’s book. If the laughter flags in one surreal routine (about a cowboy with guns for hands) that only serves to highlight the ludicrously high hit-rate elsewhere.
Most sketch shows make the same mistake, of wringing every laugh from a skit till it’s dry, but here no routine outstays its welcome. Some of the funniest, including Treen’s turn as a headscarfed 1960s dolly bird, are over within one joke-packed minute. Skin Pigeon is a gloriously daft hour from one of the most exciting young comics around. TFS
[Reviewed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleaseance Courtyard (Pleasance One)When: 7.30pmUntil: Aug 12-23 only
In a nutshell: Ahir Shah starts tugging heartstrings before he even sets foot on stage. Over the PA in a darkened theatre, as a prologue to this hour, he tells us about watching TV with his family as a small boy. One night in 1998, he heard a sound he’d rarely heard before: his grandparents’ laughter. Watching them howl at the pilot episode of Goodness Gracious Me – the first time they’d seen British Asians being funny on screen – he decided that night to become a comedian.
That decision worked out pretty well: Shah won the world’s most prestigious live comedy award, by accident. His director Adam Brace had died suddenly in April 2023 with this show still half-finished. So Ends arrived at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe as a work-in-progress, with critics and prize-judges not invited. That memo didn’t reach the Edinburgh Comedy Award panel; sent to Ends by mistake, they loved it and gave it the trophy. 
Personally, I’d happily have awarded Shah that prize five years ago. Having started stand-up while still a schoolboy at a rough-round-the-edges comprehensive, and later performed with the Footlights at Cambridge (leaving him “functionally bilingual in both Posh Boy and Roadman”), the thirty-something has long been one of our most eloquent, thought-provoking comic voices.
There are comic detours about Ottolenghi cookbooks and money-saving expert Martin Lewis, and the unlikely tale of how Latin lessons saved him from a mugging, but the backbone of this beautifully told show uses Shah’s family’s story as the story of multicultural Britain in miniature.
Reflecting on his grandfather’s stints in the most English workplaces imaginable (at a baked-beans factory, on a double-decker bus) he asks profound questions about generational sacrifice, and what it means to work to make your children’s lives a little better than our own. By the end, I was wiping away tears. 
Political comedy can often fall back on an everything-is-awful stance; ranting is both easy and funny, while nuance is neither. Yet in this defiantly hopeful show, Shah takes a longer view. To his late grandfather – who arrived in Britain from India in 1964 – the UK of the 2020s, and the very idea of a British-Indian Prime Minister, would seem “an unimaginable utopia of progress”. In Shah’s household, news of Sunak’s appointment was instantly followed by ribbing from his competitive parents: “Have you seen what Mr Sunak’s son has done today? Still, you enjoy Mocking your Week.”
Ends may not be this fast-talking philosopher-comic’s funniest show to date, nor his most dazzlingly clever, but it is his most assured and likeable, thanks to the seemingly effortless way it weaves together the personal and the political into a big-hearted, uplifting whole. TFS
[Reviewed at the Soho Theatre, London]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Monkey Barrel 3)When: 4.15pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12, 19)
In a nutshell: The stage is strewn with cardboard tombstones. Among them walks Lara Ricote – less Tomb Raider, more oddball priestess – before wafting through the crowd in a white christening gown. Any audience lives only for one night, she explains; in this show, we will be baptised with a new name, build an intimate relationship with the mischievous young stand-up, and be snuffed out an hour later. 
It’s a cute conceit: the goofy Mexican comic uses the performer-audience bond as a stand-in for romance, tying together an hour of sweet and salty observational comedy about the ups and downs of a longterm relationship. We’re encouraged to call out vowels and consonants, Countdown-style, to generate a shared name (on press night, “Kofut Duba”), which provides a consistently funny running joke. “I like you, Kofut,” she grins. 
Ricote is one of the fastest-rising stars on the scene, popping up on QI and Live at the Apollo since the summer of 2022, when she was crowned the Edinburgh Fringe’s Best Newcomer (the award that launched the careers of Harry Hill and Tim Minchin).
Nobody sounds quite like Ricote, which is partly due to her writing – raised in Mexico but based in Amsterdam, she seems to have escaped all the clichés of bog-standard British observational stand-up – and partly due to her actual voice. A high, cartoonish lisp one moment, an animal growl the next, its unusual timbre is a natural comic asset, brilliantly deployed. “I sound like this offstage, too,” she jokes. “I’m hard of hearing but that has nothing to do with the voice, unfortunately. That’s just a kiss on the forehead from God himself.”
Ricote has degenerative hearing loss, while her partner, Fernando, has no sense of smell. As you’d imagine, she gets no end of material from this: “We’re like each other’s service dogs.” Having a boyfriend who can’t smell has its upsides, an idea she illustrates with an acted-out mime of an unnoticed fart, sashaying into a room like a catwalk model. (Ricote has a flair for silly, full-body physical comedy.)
There’s a Seinfeldish simplicity to the stronger routines here, whether she’s pleading ignorance about such ideas as “communicating” and “being supportive” – she’s new to relationships, how could she possibly have known – or splitting the audience in two, and judging both halves on their reactions: “Half of you came here, and the other half were brought – and I can tell.”
The show that won Ricote her Best Newcomer trophy was thrilling but scattershot, a ragbag of ideas. This follow-up, directed by fellow Gen-Z comedy wunderkind Leo Reich, is more streamlined, more theatrical. At times, it feels too neatly put together, as when a silly opening musical number (a mangled rendition of Let It Be) gets an inevitable reprise at the end, or when a prop-based joke self-consciously punctures a moment of seriousness. But if it’s not quite as packed with quotable gags, it still feels like a step in the right direction from a comedian destined for great things. TFS
[Reviewed at the Soho Theatre, London]
Tickets: edfringe.com
Where: Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance One)When: 9pmUntil: Aug 25 (not 12)
In a nutshell: “My utter lack of ego is godlike,” croons Jazz Emu – voice of an angel, mind of an idiot – as he barges past his four-piece backing band to elbow his way into the spotlight. For a deliciously silly hour, we are transported to the Royal Albert Hall – or, at least, its cramped and seedy basement. For this is where the world’s pre-eminent jazz-funk-pop star is preparing for his set at the Royal Variety Performance. There’s no room upstairs: Kelly Clarkson, his nemesis, has pinched the stage for her soundcheck. The stakes are high: can he impress the King, and thus beat Clarkson to the knighthood? (In this surreal universe, there’s only ever one knighthood up for grabs; if it doesn’t go to him, the alternative is Sir Kelly.)
If there is a better musical comedy act in the country right now, I’ll eat my disco ball. Dreamt up by young ex-Footlight Archie Henderson, Jazz Emu is a marvellous comic creation – a monster of vanity and hubris, insecurity bubbling under the surface. Every detail serves the louche, retro-naff aesthetic, from his appalling flared trousers, to his sub-Jarvis Cocker dance moves, to his unplaceable accent (a Eurovision announcer’s Scandi-RP).
The real joke is the musicianship, which is superb. These tunes are far better than they have any need to be, and wildly mismatched to their tongue-twistingly unhip lyrics (one song, for instance, sets a spam email to music). If there is a better musical comedy act in the country right now, I’ll eat my disco ball. Dreamt up by young ex-Footlight Archie Henderson, Jazz Emu is a marvellous comic creation – a monster of vanity and hubris, insecurity bubbling under the surface.
His meticulously polished 2022 solo show was a revelation. If this follow-up falls a whisker short of matching it – here, the knighthood framing device feels more thrown-together than the previous show’s bonkers plotline – what it lacks in precision it makes up for in party atmosphere. TFS
[Reviewed at the Soho Theatre, London]
Tickets: edfringe.com