Edinburgh Fringe Comedy reviews: John Tothill | Thanyia Moore | Alison Spittle | Ben Pope | Cat Cohen
From burst appendices to life-threatening septicaemia to excessive foreskins, medical conditions are at the heart of lots of stand-up shows this year. Ashley Davies triages the best of them
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)
★★★★☆
Thanyia Moore: August
Upstairs at Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)
★★★☆☆
Alison Spittle: BIG
Monkey Barrel 1 (Venue 515)
★★★★☆
Ben Pope: The Cut
The Box at Assembly George Square (Venue 8)
★★★★☆
Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)
★★★★☆
John Tothill’s gorgeously louche character could have us spellbound whether he had a strong story to tell or not, but, good gracious, does he have a humdinger of a tale in This Must Be Heaven.
Last year he funded his Fringe run by taking part in a medical experiment that gave him malaria – and plenty of material for that year’s show, The Last Living Libertine. But a few days into the run he developed crippling stomach pain which he tried, like the jolly-old pro he is, to ignore.
The symptoms worsened and it turned out that his appendix had been obliterated, causing intra-abdominal sepsis that could have killed him. The poor man was hallucinating with it and could barely move.
His description of the ordeal is wrapped in a velvety bundle of whimsical flourishes, in which he touches upon everything from the Margate Crab Museum’s devotion to destroying the bourgeoisie to the ways in which his love of indulgence is hindering his goals.
After several playful teasers, he tells us about Edward Dando, an unapologetic Victorian oyster glutton and thief. This was a man, declares the foppish Tothill, who was free; who truly knew himself.
It’s deliriously fun being in the company of someone who wears his learning with such playful elegance, every sentence and gesture delivering a big laugh. He’s like a devilish cocktail of the best elements of Oscar Wilde, Miles Jupp and your favourite naughty friend whose persuasive “Oh, let’s have one more, darling,” leads to you calling in sick the following day.
It was also during the Fringe – two years ago – that Thanyia Moore ended up in hospital. Well prepared and supported, she was excited for the debut show that she’d been working towards for years, and she was going to “Usain Bolt” it. But her pregnancy (she was in the first trimester) started going wrong almost immediately, and what followed were frustrating medical interventions, a necessary trip back to London, cancelled shows and a heartbreaking emotional response.
Moore, an assured and charismatic presence with a persuasive style of storytelling, has taken time to process what happened and how she reacted at the time (blocking her loved ones, for example, after telling them what had happened), and, despite the sadness of her story, she’s always in control of the mood.
We’re left with a clear-eyed insight into the myriad ways in which people react to losses such as this, underpinned by a comfortingly logical acceptance of statistical probability of unviable pregnancies.
And, as she puts it, the comedian’s curse is that “We don’t have a bad day; we have material.”
Alison Spittle’s medical problems were life-threatening. In BIG, her finest show to date, she describes how a cellulitis skin infection triggered by a fall turned into septicaemia, which then caused her organs to start shutting down. And in true millennial style, she started having a panic attack in hospital because she didn’t have the capacity to reply to everyone who’d sent her messages of concern on Instagram.
A gifted storyteller with an irresistible turn of phrase and a true gift for comedy, she has some important things to say about fatphobia – from amusement parks and clothes shops to outright cruelty during a moment when what she needed was empathy. The day Adele slimmed down was her 9/11, she jokes, and, sadly, Spittle almost feels as if she has to justify the medical reasons behind her own significant weight loss.
“I became fat so I could destroy the NHS from within,” she quips, partly in response to a well-meaning but ignorant suggestion from a family member that she lose some weight. And while, politically, Spittle had claimed her space, the sleep apnoea, pre-diabetes and cellulitis all had the same cause and she didn’t really have a choice but to go on weight-loss injections.
People develop their own forms of armour following traumatic experiences, and Spittle trusts us with a brief but courageous insight into something that happened to her when she was very young. BIG is a beautifully crafted piece of work – as important and funny as it is radical.
Ben Pope’s need for surgery wasn’t an emergency, but his problem was causing discomfort. Like one in 100 people with penises, he had phimosis – an excess of foreskin. As with an Amazon delivery, there was too much packaging, he jokes. But although he covers, with great wit and gentle, instinctive charm, the process of deciding to “Marie Kondo” his body, entertaining interactions with medical experts and the ensuing pain (gosh, but there’s a horribly vivid simile to look forward to), The Cut seems really to be about the value of communication and love.
On one level, there’s the conversation his girlfriend instigates about his intimate problem (and some funny-cos-they’re-true observations about how ill-equipped we are linguistically to compliment a penis), while on another he shares insight about his relationship with his father, who lived with Parkinson’s over the past decade of his life.
In order to help his dad continue to do things he loved, Pope, a man who’s clearly as generous as he is self-deprecating, would facilitate the older man’s interests in a way that appears to have brought them both emotionally and physically closer. There’s nothing mawkish here, though: it’s just a beautifully constructed and communicated slice of life that also happens to be funny all the way through.
The term “main character energy” could have been invented for Cat Cohen, who’s made a career out of her dramatic self-obsession. It’s a trait that might be tiresome in less boldly talented hands, but delivering it via comedy cabaret packed with some extremely candid personal information, she’s a true star of our age.
At the age of 30 the American discovered she’d had a stroke (though it’s hard to determine exactly when it happened), caused by a hole in her heart. Having been a lifelong hypochondriac who will forever be outraged by having been called a “normal girl” at stage school, she felt not only vindicated by the medical revelation, but thrilled about the attention it would deliver.
Sure, she had to cancel a Fringe run and European tour for the surgery and she makes artful sport about the fact that she hates not to be in control, but she certainly gets a lot of mileage out of it and the adoration from her largely millennial audience seems absolute.
All shows run until 24 August
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