Fringe comedy reviews: Scout Boxall: God's Favourite | Tom Towelling Teaches You to Knit + more

Scout Boxall: God's Favourite ★★★★

Assembly George Square (The Box) (Venue 8) until 30 August

A non-binary, bipolar bisexual, big into LARPing (live action roleplaying as a fantasy or historical character), Australian comic Scout Boxall's fizzy hour is no regular Fringe debut.

With shout-outs that range from Joan of Arc and 12th century German mystic and polymath Hildegard of Bingen, to Formula 1 and Aussie rules football, Boxall is a singular, strikingly mulleted character, eager to share the worst time of their life.

As they gradually garb themselves in their preferred medieval nun outfit, they recount a dark night of the soul when they were LARPing at a friend's fictional wedding in the middle of nowhere, and panickingly realised they were without their bipolar medication for the first time since they were prescribed at 17.

Given that Boxall had been given these after an intense adolescent episode in which they locked themselves, hermit-like in their room to complete a school assignment, only emerging to claim top marks in the country and to be sectioned, offers some indication of the level of the stakes.

That's the narrative through-line of this intricate, low-key multimedia show. But God's Favourite is a much less straightforward introduction than that, as Boxall's various (failing) coping strategies prompt reflections on mental health, family, sexuality and gender that are richly entertaining, their insider-outsider, non-conformist perspectives encapsulated in a brilliant line about them choosing which of their dysfunctional parents they plan to turn into.

The sub-culture observations on LARPing, and indeed, bipolarity, are compelling, as they tease anyone with common-or-garden ADHD, and reflect on the surprisingly layered, horny intersection of such roleplay and mental health issues.

Having been noticed by the mainstream after one of their comedy clips went scarily viral, Boxall can be devastating about the “straight”, as exemplified by a hilarious account of the moron who ran into a wall trying to outpace Olympic sprinter Cathy Freeman. Highly distinctive but cuttingly funny above all else. Jay Richardson

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Tom Towelling Teaches You to Knit ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

Mr Chips for Generation Beta, Tom Towelling is a maths teacher whose puckish inner life and desire to be a crooner also casts him as a gentle daydreamer, a mildly desperate sort of Billy Liar, Walter Mitty-esque fantasist.

Unwinding wool through and around the audience, rewarding them for participation, connecting and drawing them to him, he's got the superficial authority that his suit bestows. But also a light of eccentricity in his eyes that suggests he'll lead you to mishap rather than good exam results, deploying his mathematical acumen to distinguish the differing hairlines of his balding Irish uncles.

Blending autobiographical stand-up, skits and songs, some Auto-Tune-enabled for added weirdness, two set-pieces stand out as definitive for this enjoyably personable, somewhat cracked Fringe debut.

One is a team talk he imagines delivering to the England football team beaten by Italy in the Euro 2020 final, increasingly fixating on the compensatory sweets he's provided rather than any salve for the sting of defeat or actual wisdom. Another is the sympathy case of his favourite pupil, touching almost in spite of itself.

Excellent in his crowd work, forging an appropriately collegiate atmosphere, Towelling's a multi-faceted talent who just needs to curb his tendency to drift a little. Jay Richardson

Sydnee Washington: My Black Barbie Story ★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire) (Venue 338) until 16 August

Completely upending the stereotype of laptop-wielding multimedia comics being nerdy, inhibited white guys, Sydnee Washington is an absolute scream. And her sitting at a desk as she relays her crazy life story is the one thing that's containing the charming and glamorously chaotic American.

Sent by her mother from crack epidemic 1980s New York to stay with elderly, churchgoing relatives in the south, she was a lonely child whose best friend was her life-size (?!) Barbie doll, prompting her to illustrate her Fringe debut with an army of the plastic figurines onscreen.

Eventually finding friendship and letting her hair down in college, she failed academically and left to complete her ugly duckling transformation back in New York, breaking bad on the nightclub scene. Initially as a pretty patron scoring free drinks, then employed as a “bottle girl” glamorising celebrity hangouts, Washington embarked on a whirl of drug taking and sexual discovery.

Embracing her lesbianism, she wound up losing all of her money in Miami, before finally cleaning up and finding a successful comedy and podcasting career.

Spanning addiction, neurodiversity, Epstein-adjacent trafficking and the entitled behaviour of the famous, it's a dizzying, cautionary account and she literally has to fast-forward through great chunks to finish it. Too much is not enough of this massively endearing motormouth. Jay Richardson

Tom Short : I Get ChatGPT to Write My Edinburgh Show ★★★

Nic 4 at Hoots @ Nicolson Square (Venue 63) until 31 August

This is a very sweet show by a very sweet comic, spun from a really rather brilliant, as well as very current, idea.

AI and ChatGPT are everywhere, whether we like it – and indeed, whether we realise it – or not. What Tom does is bring it, literally, front and centre of his stage. We, the audience, suggest anything and everything that we think might garner Tom the five star review and Edinburgh Comedy Award that he so wants and it is fed into ChatGPT.

And so we start on The Best Comedy Show in the World. We decide on important component topics, which is more difficult than it sounds as Tom is, he tells us, a “very boring” man. The kind of man who reads the back of crisp packets to check the ingredient quotients.

The main problem here is that, while AI comes up with lists of “sub prompts” for each topic, some of which just beg to be had fun with, Tom doesn't seem inclined to pay any attention to them. Which rather defeats the purpose of the show. He should relax and enjoy his own great idea more. Kate Copstick

The Devil Wears Primark ★★★

Cellar at Laughing Horse @ The Raging Bull (Venue 332) and Shanghai at Le Monde (Venue 47) until 31 August

This is a genuinely nice show promoted as something considerably edgier. But it’s an enjoyable hour all the same. It’s a sashay through one woman's perimenopause with reference to the vagaries of finding love through dating apps, the language of the emoji, the realities of life on Mountjaro (which is not all effortless weight loss and compliments, we discover) and what might be termed a blow by blow account of farting while doing yoga.

Rachel spends some laughless time finding out where we are all from and going nowhere with the information, but she is a warm and likeable stage presence and when she gets into what might be termed the 'meatier' sections of the show we get to appreciate the enjoyments of time with a woman who has lived a bit.

There is Uber Eats and Guilty Pleasures (which seems to strike a major chord with many in the room), our protein obsession and a passing nod to the LGBTQIA+ community. There is nothing devilish here, but the occasional nugget of naughtiness gives Rachel Milne's hour enough frisson not to disappoint. Kate Copstick

READ MORE: 'I hope I'm keeping his memory alive' - the Fringe comedians exploring their family legacies through stand-up

Armageddon Outta Here ★★

The Saloon Bar at Just The Tonic at Westside Rodeo (Venue 25) until 31 August

Tom Johnson and Chris Roberts certainly work for their laughs here, in this vaguely Armageddon themed sketch show.

We get astronauts fighting over who gets to die heroically and save the world, the world's richest men board an escape shuttle, and an unhinged director who refuses to cancel a school Nativity. We end on the really rather catchy Bollocks Song.

These are fun ideas, slightly overstretched. I particularly admired the glorious disregard for prop management, but it rather feels like a work in progress. Kate Copstick

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