Earlier this month, I wrote about my visit to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I focused on my time as a performer, doing guest spots in stand-up compilation shows, with mixed but—to me, at least—fulfilling results. I mentioned some of the highlights I experienced as an audience member—watching Tony Law, Rose Matafeo, and David O’Doherty—but I didn’t get to write about them. This is my chance.
Tony Law is a Canadian comic whose shtick involves the fact—or pretense—that his show is unstructured, unrehearsed, and largely improvised from a germ of prepared material that peters out about 5-10 minutes in—and is in any case “shit.” Most stand-ups work from a script but create the illusion of spontaneity in performance; with Law, it is genuinely hard to tell how much is planned and how much unpredicted, even by him.
Here’s a brilliant scripted bit about being too lazy to finish writing jokes:
When I saw him in Edinburgh, the first 5 minutes of his show were about the venue—a narrow, overheated space, like a buried aircraft fuselage, “air-conditioned” by two futile standing fans—from which Law extracted every possible punchline for the snarky premise, “I’m glad they got my rider: I can only perform in a …”
If the rest of the show was about anything, it was about aging, prompted by a memory lapse—scripted or not?—that interrupted a joke and raised a poignant question for a comic whose “writing” (by his own account) involves thinking of things on stage, remembering them, and then saying them again tomorrow.
It was the first show I saw at the Fringe; it was magical—and it was an early contender for best show of the trip.
I liked Rose Matafeo’s first special, Horndog, quite a bit, though it isn’t exactly my thing. Here’s a good introduction:
Her new hour, On and On and On, borders on genius. It’s hard to discuss the show without spoilers, but it’s about therapy and whether people ever really change, and I think it helps if you go into it thinking about music, and about the repetitive nature of stand-up performance—saying the same words to different people night after night after night. How does music fit in? I’m not sure, but it’s one of several threads in a show that had a low-key theatrical subtlety of the sort that makes me wish I could see it again. I hope she brings it to Boston.
A simpler source of joy was David O’Doherty, who celebrated stand-up comedy and his untraumatizing parents, incarnated by a random couple in the audience. Here he is in a less upbeat mood:
Finally, my pick for best show of the Fringe—having seen 15 of about 4000—was Natalie Palamides’ WEER. Here spoilers would be unacceptable, so it’s hard to explain why you have to see it if you can. Don’t be put off if you didn’t like her Netflix special, Nate—though I did. As far as I can tell, there are no clips of Palamides online that give you any real sense of what she is up to now. Which is as it ought to be. WEER is the most surprising, virtuosic, thought-provoking, tear-inducing comedy I’ve see in a long time. For those lucky enough to be in or near London, it’s playing at the Soho Theatre in November.
BONUS CONTENT: Simon Munnery on Venn diagrams, comedy, and art.
I've seen Simon Munnery many times over the years.
25 years ago I saw his "League Against Tedium" act (which became the BBC2 series "AttentionScum") and that included the best ever philosophy-related comedy routine: an animation of Wittgenstein saying "language is a game". Simon replies "No it isn't", Ludwig says "Yes it is"... and so on.
Yes, yes, I know that's not a fair representation of later Wittgenstein... never mind. The League Against Tedium grew out of the 90s project CLUUB ZARATHUSTRA, which also involved Stewart Lee, played Edinburgh but didn't get further than an unbroadcast TV pilot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtwCkqla1PA
If you remember music in the 90s and you weren't on drugs you were probably quite irritated by "Little Fluffy Clouds" by The Orb... Simon and Julian Barratt (of The Boosh) did a great parody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__QqQq9XBsQ