Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Sophie Garrad: Poor Little Rich Girl | Dan Rath: Tropical Depression | Old God | Brett Blake – Little Scallywag | Shalaka Kurup: Get A Grip

COMEDY

Sophie Garrad: Poor Little Rich Girl ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

Affluent kids assuaging guilt at their privilege by gently spoofing it are ten a trustfund at the Edinburgh Fringe. But Sophie Garrad makes no apologies for the start she had in life, the ski holidays and exotic pets, the little tyrant she was to her nannies. Indeed, such is the brash affluence of her family that she operates somewhere between stand-up and character act, a compelling hinterland where you're never quite sure what's true and what's embellished exaggeration of nouvelle riche snobbery and outrageousness. Made In Chelsea rendered live and in the flesh, albeit with arch self-awareness. The loyal following that Garrad has acquired though her social media sketches means that she's utterly indulged by the spotlight too, only further blurring distinctions of fiction and reality as she claims a not entirely unjustified resemblance to Cameron Diaz.

Sipping happily from her glittery drink, reading extracts from her fluffy pink teenage diary, Garrad is a truly gossipy storyteller, amused and amusing, engaging impishly with the crowd, airily witty in her constant asides. Beyond something of a snake fetish and occasional admissions of frustration in love though, you'll figure that you've got a strong handle on her especially pampered stereotype. Gradually though, the keeping up appearances performance starts to slip, class cracks widen and adolescent trauma is revealed. Delicious, absolutely delicious, you'll savour the schadenfreude.

Notwithstanding some more or less straightforward exploration of psychopathic behaviour traits however, Garrad, to her credit, only lightly shifts tone. She seeks some sympathy for her deluded younger self. But the revelatory section is as funny and often cheerily indiscreet as what's preceded it. Obscenely wealthy, narcissistic monsters with criminal backgrounds oughtn't be this endearing.

JAY RICHARDSON

READ MORE: The Best Edinburgh Fringe Comedy 2025: Every show with a four or five star review from The Scotsman so far

COMEDY

Dan Rath: Tropical Depression ★★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire) (Venue 338) until 24 August

A late but always enlivening addition to the Fringe, Dan Rath's renegade brilliance impresses every time you see it crank into operation. Eschewing eye contact, typically muttering about how he's “not doing well”, the Australian stand-up is contemptuous of the compulsion for comics sharing their ADHD diagnosis. His singular autism, supplemented by bipolar and PTSD if you give credence to his superbly crafted gags about them, is so much, so integral a part of his persona that he scarcely need shout about it, showing not telling in the main.

The straining effort of social interaction for Rath is conveyed by the extreme lengths a barista goes to in order to avoid his small talk, the attraction or otherwise of introverts and extroverts explored. The comic would much rather sit in a friend's blatant lie than acknowledge the implications, though he interrogates modern social buzzwords such as “gaslighting” and “ghosting”, finding them wanting when scrutinised through the prism of his flights of fantasy. Two striking aspects of his rare imagination and instinctive, elevated whimsy are that he's topical, more so than many acts labelled political. And edgy, without grandstanding. The conflict in the Middle East, North Korea, famine, child soldiers, 9/11, the Holocaust and high school shootings all feature here.

Yet Rath is neither satirical or showy in the nominative possibilities of “Benjamin Netanyahu” or the fashions in Pyongyang, these are just the materials at his agitated mind's disposal, subjects swerved by others perhaps because it takes great originality to make them funny. Of those routines that don't quite land with the audience, he simply mutters: “You build a statue by taking away the clay”. A one-man expression of neurodiversity, Rath remains a stiff, awkward performer but the most sublime, cracked writer, an absolute artist in bleak hilarity.

JAY RICHARDSON

COMEDY

Old God ★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 24 August

A multi-layered clowning spectacle and satire for these chaotic times, Alec Jones-Trujillo's creation Old God is an effortlessly charismatic wag, resplendent in his arch badinage and capering playfulness. An immortal being, garbed in the classic appearance of the Pierrot, his mischievousness is attested to by the ribald mime he delivers in front of his Gardens of Versailles backdrop, the artist's brushwork and the price he paid for it eliciting snippy comment.

Spanning the breadth of recorded space and time, aspiring to the majesty of mythology, Old God is nevertheless bang up to date, performing the compelling wordless piece “Jeffrey Bezos Has a Dirty Little Secret” and delivering folksy parable on the divisiveness of social media. Reciting T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland, peering around, and popping out from behind the fourth wall before discarding it entirely, Jones-Trujillo becomes increasingly reflexive, sending up his motives for making such perverse art in a narrowly commercialised world.

There are occasional longueurs, characterised by expectation rather than sustained laughter. But Old God contains multitudes. And it's to be hoped that he revisits this mortal plain and bestows his theatrically lush storytelling once again, perhaps in a more tightly focused production.

JAY RICHARDSON

READ MORE: Fringe Firsts week one: we reveal the first five winners of the Scotsman's prestigious theatre prizes

COMEDY

Brett Blake – Little Scallywag ★★★★

Assembly George Square Studios Venue 17) until 24 August

Growing up in a “shit”, isolated town in Western Australia, Brett Blake was forever in detention, a tearaway whose old-fashioned, restless flavour of ADHD led to his teachers taking desperate, literal measures to tire him out. Not a bad kid exactly but a “scallywag”. Or “turd” as he called himself in the original Antipodean production of this show. However, one ill-fated night in his teenage life, his weakness for mischief, class envy of the snootier town up the hill and a rather gallant defence of his school crush created a perfect storm of violent confrontation with the police that made him the lead item on local news for weeks.

The thoughtful yet still rascally comic can look back on that pivotal time with the benefit of hindsight, a fairly robust defence of mitigating factors and a bizarrely specific obsession with makes of automobile. His’ seems an unlikely redemption arc, not shared by everyone in the story. And he relates his tale with tenderness for the suffering of his parents, vividly rendered recall of just how much trouble he was in and the born-again zeal of one who's survived a narrow squeak, then enthusiastically gone on to make further big mistakes in life.

There's a wonderfully masochistic, serpentine logic to the way in which the adult Blake is forced to fork out a small fortune to have his ex-girlfriend berate and belittle him in the cause of securing him the mental health help he still needs. But if Blake portrays himself as a particularly persecuted victim of fate, there's no denying he's had it rough at times, while retaining an acute appreciation of his own ridiculousness that allows him to extract big, consistent laughs from it. Beneath his bluff, blustering exterior, he's a sensitive soul and avowed Mummy's boy.

JAY RICHARDSON

COMEDY

Shalaka Kurup: Get A Grip ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

One of the rising stars of the UK circuit, Indian comic Shalaka Kurup seems born to be a stand-up. Assured and dryly witty, the former engineer with a doctorate in studying trains is clearly on a spectrum of some kind. Yet which? Her move to this country has coincided with her embarking on therapy. And she's been gifted the golden ticket for a Fringe debutant seeking to make a splash – the death of a loved one, who, for good measure imbued her with an appreciation of Moby Dick, Herman Melville's intense, weird whaling epic characterising her quest to find out what's up with herself.

With a flavour of intellectual curiousness rather than emotional enquiry, Kurup is able to disassociate from the the autism jibes thrown her way in comedians' roast battles. And, while as ill-equipped to work on a counselling helpline as her fellow students, she showed herself to be entirely dispassionate dealing with, and even seeking out, a nuisance caller with a peculiar set of sexual proclivities. With some wickedly funny lines, Kurup's pursuit of a diagnosis nevertheless feels somewhat indulgent from the first. And despite her show title, the story itself doesn't grab you.

JAY RICHARDSON

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