Anyways, seen a whole spate of comedy in the last 36 hours...
First up was One Man Show-Off, a low-key sketch show performed by one guy called Dave. Not the best thing I've ever seen, but hardly the worst. He did two wonderful sketches - the first was him playing an Arabic tour-guide, and it was such a spot-on parody that I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Unfortunately, it seemed I was the only one in the room who had lived in Egypt, and thus I was laughing by myself. Not so good. The other seemed to tickle everyone else, with the man brilliantly miming being a jock at a club who gets dissappointed when a slow song comes on. Trying in vain to get his mates all worked up again, he eventually succumbs to the music and finally gets the courage to ask a girl to dance. This just so happens to be a girl rather daintily sat in the seat in front of me. Plant or no, it was a brilliantly pitched sketch and overall I was pretty impressed.
Not so impressed with the second act - Tiffany Stevenson. Same deal with Janeane Garofalo here - she'd be an interesting person to talk to, but she just didn't have an hour of stand-up in her, with the material exactly resembling a 10-minute idea stretched out to sixty minutes. She also had the gall to start slagging off members of the audience - and considering that our numbers were already slight thanks to terrible reviews from three different sources, that wasn't exactly the best way to win us over. Particularly when it wasn't funny. Oh well, you see some great stuff...you see some shit.
The final free show of the day - ah, to have mates who work at a venue! - was Phil Kay's Oh! Edinburgh! (or should I say Oh! Enbra!), and it was fantastic. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Madness of Phil Kay, he's essentially a train-of-thought comedian in the most literal sense possible. His comedy literally comes straight out of his head on the night - he's this mad old hippy who lives in tents in Edinburgh and he's got about a thousand stories about different things that have happened to him at varies times in his bonkers life. He's also got a serious story-telling gift, infusing even the most mundane stories with bouncing energy as he flies from one side of the stage to the other. The highlight being the tale of how he and 12 others stormed Edinburgh Castle butt-naked. Yes. You heard me.
About here my luck ran out, and I had to pay to go see Axis of Awesome. Just as good as last year, with some new songs and some old favourites. They even replaced their 'learning songs' with 'surprise songs', to the tune of Sex is on Fire by the Kings of Leon. With 'your sex is on fire' replaced with 'the milk has expired', 'my mum is a liar' and 'she had a penis'. Madness. But the highlight of this one was their song called 'What Would Jesus Do?'. So, you know, the point of asking it is that Jesus is a paragon of man, so to speak. But the thing is, if he was how the Christians actually believe he was - you know, a zombie magician - then there's no fucking way any of us can hope to emulate 1% of his awesomeness. So there's no point! Genius.
Last and not least, there was Shappi Khorsandi - who, by the by, is miniscule. Definitely shorter than Napoleon. Anyways, she was wonderfully funny - genuinely enganging and so ludicrously quick with a line that sometimes it's tough to keep up. Her material was interesting too - about no-one having enough time to be an activist these days, hence the title The Distracted Activist. Can't really pick out one highlight in particular...though she did mistake me and Fee for staff at the Pleasance, which was fun!That's it, really. Big update, for once! Adieu!
2 comments:
Fame, fame and furthermore more fame - at last! She always makes me hoot too.
I meant Shappi not Janeane!
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