“I've been busy. I've been growing my hair out.” Not the the most animated start to an hour of comedy, but that's how American Tig Notaro begins Boyish-Girl Interrupted, one of the most original 60 minutes I've seen at the Fringe, and certainly the most laidback.
There are some comics who can always be relied upon to create engaging and funny shows, and the Canadian Glenn Wool is one of them. His comedy appears to be straightforward stand-up – anecdotes are interspersed with one-liners and puns, with occasional interaction with the audience, to create a small world of his own, with more than a touch of the surreal about it.
Gyles Brandreth, Pleasance Courtyard ***
This is an agreeable hour of theatre and political anecdotes that former MP and now BBC presenter Gyles Brandreth tells with great aplomb. He drops a lot of names, but he's very good mimic – John Gielgud, Frank Sinatra, Prince Charles and others make an appearance – and the stories (whether wholly true or not) are very funny.
The Meltdown Festival has always been a fascinating proposition, getting a living legend in their field to curate their own personal festival line-up, and present all of their idiosyncratic choices to London in the refined and retro-futuristic surroundings of the Royal Festival Hall.
The life of the stand-up is a balance, often precarious, between those stage moments when things seem to be going just right, and the ones which look like they're about to go very wrong. The hero of Tom Shkolnik's debut feature The Comedian, Ed (Edward Hogg), seems to be making decent progress with his club appearances, but when the chance of a new relationship comes along it puts the previously settled balance of his life right out of kilter.
There's a quite a contrast between the 12,000-seat Wembley Arena in 1993 where, with the help of his erstwhile writing and performing partner David Baddiel, Rob Newman “invented” comedy as rock 'n' roll, and tonight's venue, a bijou children's puppet theatre seating 100 patrons. But then Newman - Robert Newman to those who buy his novels - is doing rather different comedy these days.
Ventriloquism, once a staple of music hall and variety theatre, has rather gone out of fashion. More mature readers - or students of the form - may be familiar with names such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Shari Lewis and Lambchop or Ray Alan and Lord Charles, but they are all decades gone from our stages and television screens. Nina Conti is now one of just a few vent acts to have a popular following, and she's reinventing the form.
Aware I was going to see a stand-up comedian at the Brighton Festival but not knowing much about Daniel Kitson, the opening of his new show, After The Beginning, Before The End, bemused. On he wandered, shaven bald of head, geeky, bearded, wearing specs and a librarian-style brown jacket. He sat in a nondescript red chair at a small table with a cup of tea and pressed buttons on an electronic gizmo which began to burble sweet abstract electro bleeps. Then he went into a monologue which ceased an hour and 40 minutes later.
Eddie Izzard is lining up his targets. He’s taking issue with dictatorial authority figures, with God, royals and priests, right-wingers and high-profile liars. These days, he doesn’t merely natter about the colour of his nail varnish, though that’s still in the mix. In his new solo show, Force Majeure - trumpeted as the most extensive comedy tour ever, taking him from Cardiff to Kathmandu - his transvestism is mentioned, but only en passant.
No theme, no message, no set, no title. Northern Irish comedian Jimeoin is a beguilingly old-fashioned kind of standup. “Just jokes,” he told us at the beginning of his new show, and he was true to his word. His gift lies in mining the quirks of everyday life for points of universal recognition, whether it’s the devilish business of refilling the ice tray, changing bin bags, bringing in the shopping, or why you’ll never see a busy man eating an ice cream.