Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Kate Dolan: The Critic | Zoë Coombs Marr: The Splash Zone + more

Assembly George Square (Venue 8) until 24 August

I witnessed an illustrative moment before this show began, when Kate Dolan joined her own queue and wasn't recognised by the venue's staff.

Admittedly, she was sporting the cracking visual pun with which she kicks off her irrepressibly funny second Fringe hour. But the incident fed neatly into the abiding sense of paranoia the Australian-based Brit evinces, even if it perhaps undermined her premise that she is always her harshest critic.

With a tendency to insert a running commentary of self-mocking, quirky vocal tics and inflections into her stories, in a manner I found most reminiscent of Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective of all things, Dolan adds to her layers of delivery with the conceit of a voice distorting gizmo.

Rendered in demonic, distorted tones, expressive of her inner thoughts, the effect could be harsh and destabilising if Dolan didn't weave it so seamlessly into the flow of her narrative.

Forever pacing around the stage, noting her physical resemblance to Roald Dahl's vigorously limber Miss Trunchbull, she's got a restless relentlessness that she fills with a steady stream of barbed anecdotes, invariably targeting herself.

Less troubled comics might have introduced their recent marriage earlier and more positively in their set. But the insecure Dolan drops this casual aside long after musing on others' speculation about her sexuality. Besides, dogged by her own problems, she resents her husband's relative peace of mind and does anything to unsettle the mental stability of men generally, striking unlikely flails for feminism.

Revealing ever more vulnerability, including her grudgingly admitted, stereotypical female comic's adherence to mystical “woo woo shit”, Dolan ultimately opens up upon the treatment she's receiving. But it's being on stage and bedroom role-play that really allow her to get out of her own head for a bit.

Jay Richardson

Zoë Coombs Marr: The Splash Zone ★★★★

Monkey Barrel 4 at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515) until 24 August

Zoe Coombs Marr planned to make a pure stand-up show, following the distractions thrown up by her fertile, playful and over-active mind. But she got distracted.

First it was the idea of making a T shirt gun, then it was the presence of a couple of unexpected Trump fans in her audience at an invite only gig. She wants to be a comic whose material is accessible to anyone, and she is. But did she really want these people, who are not her people, to be at her gig?

The question led Coombs Marr to think about audience interaction, and how crowd work changes the sense of connection between a comic and the audience. Don’t worry, there isn’t really a lot of audience interaction in the show, although if you sit on the front row there is a chance to win a prize.

Winding through the show is the story of the teenage Coombs Marr on a solo railway journey across Australia. Will teenage Zoe make it home? Will she talk to any strangers on the way? You’ll have to watch the show to find out.

Into her wonderfully potent and very funny storytelling mix, she also throws in a conversation with her grandad, some facts about leprechauns and some encounters with conspiracy theorists, whose views threaten to shake her sense of reality.

It’s a brilliant demonstration of ADHD as a comic super-power, with the laughs supercharged by callback after callback, which ties the whole meandering narrative into a coherent whole.

Claire Smith

Jonny Pelham: Is It Me? ★★★★

Hive 2 at Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive) (Venue 313) until 25 August

Jonny Pelham was one of the first male comics to talk about being a survivor or child sexual abuse on stage in his ground breaking 2019 show Off Limits.

He references the show, and the story, but he isn’t letting it define him any more. Pelham has an easy confidence on stage, even though his material contains plenty of things he might be miserable about.

Newly single, Pelham talks about his mental health, his bodily imperfections, his erectile dysfunction and his financial insecurity. It’s a lot.

But Pelham subverts the narrative with some excellently written jokes which bring an unexpected jollity to the parade of utter miserabilism. He has a way of giving ordinary everyday struggles a subversively surreal twist which lightens the subject matter and provokes big laughs. This is no pity party. We are laughing at him and with him.

I’ve recently become allergic to the use of the word ‘paedo’ as a punchline. But given his history, Pelham is uniquely entitled to use it. And he does, sparingly, in a way which is hilarious and entirely appropriate.

Pelham has a way of laughing at his troubles which will help you laugh at your own, or just forget them for an hour, which is what comedy can do, if it’s done right. We’re all in this together, and touring up and down the country as a comic Pelham has found a surprising reason to be cheerful about the perilous state of the world.

As he closes his show he moves unexpectedly from the personal to the political. He has a theory about why the current crop of comics are struggling with mental health which is intelligent, insightful and throws the whole thing on its head.

In a flashback to a psychotherapy session Jonny suddenly comes up with the answer to it all, which is funny, ridiculous but also makes a whole lot of sense.

Claire Smith

Aideen McQueen: Waiting for Texto ★★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 25 August

Impressively wine-stained and already pleasantly half-cut by early afternoon, Aideen McQueen immediately makes for a friendly hostess as she welcomes the audience to her flat (I.e. show).

The Irish comedian immediately strikes up an immediate rapport with her guests as she appears to have almost finished a bottle of red and her inhibitions are dropping, emotions coming closer to the surface. It’s an act of course — this show could easily slip into the theatre section of the Fringe programme. It’s got the shape of a play but McQueen is an experienced comedian whose crowd work makes for an essential part of her appeal.

It’s a very clever strategy, McQueen’s convincing wine-warmed voice — with the merest hint of a slur — relaxes the audience’s guard too. This is a winning hour; comfortably familiar territory about the challenges of single life, the hell of dating apps and the unreasonably long time men take to return text messages but it’s seen anew with a sharp eye and easy wit.

McQueen takes the audience into her confidence, treating them as old friends and before you know it we’re complicit in her bad decisions — which is apt because we’ve all made them ourselves.

Her mam is on the phone, should she answer? An almost universal “yes!” Now it’s that guy she slept with who never texted her back: “No…yes…wait, hang on a minute!”

This isn’t an audience participation show, but McQueen is so natural that when she asks for advice it seems rude not to answer. This is frequently very funny but it’s really distinguished by its willingness to confront the realities of loneliness and regret that underpin all the laughs — and the drinking.

Remarkably, this is McQueen’s first full-length Fringe show and it’s terrifically impressive: a warm and funny debut.

Rory Ford

Benji Waterhouse: Maddening ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (venue 33) until 25 August

If Benji Waterhouse ever gets sick of being compared to medical colleague, writer and comedian Adam Kay, he hides it well – “the Adam Kay of mental healthcare” is emblazoned on the front of his best-selling book You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here.

The consultant psychiatrist seems to be following Kay’s career path with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, offering a similarly cutting indictment of Britain’s health system lightened by ‘stranger than fiction’ stories of life on the wards. A television series is surely on the cards.

His show is an odd hybrid of stand-up and promotional tour, with comedy routines alternating with readings of memorable case studies from his book, and finishing with audience questions. You have to remind yourself that you’re at the Pleasance and not up the road at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Any initial unease at him turning real patients’ mental illnesses into entertaining anecdotes is swiftly dispelled by his clear passion for the job and his battles with an underfunded and understaffed NHS. He quips that the Q&A is the audience’s best chance to speak to a psychiatrist.

In the end though it’s hard to escape the feeling that, despite his polished delivery and fine bedside manner, you’d maybe rather just read the book. Luckily signed copies are available afterwards.

David Hepburn

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