Richard Gadd 'lays bare the blackest demons of his psyche' | A throwback to the 2016 Fringe, where Bill Burr and Louis CK made flying visits

Richard Gadd 'lays bare the blackest demons of his psyche'

A throwback to the 2016 Fringe, where Bill Burr and Louis CK made flying visits

How long ago 2016 was; a time when it was still OK to like Louis CK - who got a five-star Chortle review on a flying visit to the Edinbugrh Fringe. Elsewhere, the Doug Anthony All Stars made a triumphant return to the Fringe, Richard Gadd took the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his genre-bending Monkey See, Monkey Do, and the marathon reading of the entire Chilcot report into the Iraq war won the panel prize. Here are a few of Chortle editor Steve Bennett’s reviews from that year, as we continue our journey through Fringes past.

Edinburgh Time Machine 2016

Louis CK

It takes quite some star quality to overshadowing everything else going on in Edinburgh, but Louis CK’s hit-and-run one-off put even Bill Burr’s earlier flying visit into the shade.

And the big news setting the fashionistas into a frenzy is that he’s ditched his trademark black T-shirts for a shirt and tie, trying to make an effort.

Not that the smarter image has had any effect on his comedy, which can be as existentially bleak as anyone’s, portraying a world of drudgery and struggle which makes him genuinely amazed that anyone carries on at all.

He admits to having the supposedly unthinkable thought of just abandoning his children since parenting is too wearily demanding – and that’s despite his kids seeming to be the only people he actively likes. He’s a selfish schlub, and he’s banking on enough of us being the same, at least if we were to be as honest with ourselves as he is.

So initially there’s shock at the idea of someone being so distracted and self-centred as in the deathbed scene he describes… but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. And not every wedding invitation is greeted with the gushing delight the senders would hope.

Essentially, he’s scratching through the social niceties to reveal what boorish pricks we would all be if we thought we could get away with it. And laughter’s the way to cover up that hole he’s just exposed in the collective politeness that a society needs to work.

What, he’s basically asking, is he point at which that polite behaviour would break down? He knows he would pump his dog full of drugs for an easy life, whatever the ethics, and he knows what it might take for him to at least dabble gay sex, in an hilarious section sparked by unexpected feelings while watching the Magic Mike trailer that spins off into both an exotic fantasy and the comforting idea of just having a boyfriend.

He flirts with the dark side without quite going all-in. He revels in the transgression of saying something like ‘the worst part about being beheaded is…’ just for the nervousness he can exploit. It’s the same devilish disregard for propriety that has him roll out a few stereotypical ethnic accents, cheerily acknowledging their potential for offence, chuckling, as always, at is own evil thoughts.

What Louis CK is so brilliantly and wittily able to do is to slice through to the nub of everything, and distilling out a central truth in smart memorable punchlines, whether it’s about the minutiae of taking a nap or the global dominance of Christianity – a showstopping routine that deserves a place among his finest.

The wide-raging set covers human experience from childhood, to marriage – and in CK’s case divorce as he brutally details the way love is suffocated and extinguished – and finally to death. He reckons that, at 48, he has a good mid-life vantage point, being able to remember youth and envisage dotage. It also means a weight of baggage from hard-won life experience that an eager young comic can’t hope to pick up second-hand.

Yet despite the vast scope there’s a fluidity as one topic rolls into the next: picking holes in the Achilles myth one minute, discussing his family background (from Hungary via Mexico) the next, from the way children ask each other out to, to the pit of despair that is an American public (ie state) school. Maybe it’s the biggest revelation is that CK hasn’t gone private: that he’s got cash to splash on the Horace and Pete web series, but not on his daughters’ education…
Finally a footnote for the three acts who opened for CK’s first gig in the Scottish capital for eight years: the slick and quirky political commentary of Michelle Wolf, who has her own show on the Fringe; Joe Machie, a bit of revelation with an incisive sarcasm close to CK’s own sense of humour; and the self-deprecation of Joe List, forever learning about his flaws from socially clumsy encounters.

5 stars


Bill Burr

There were a lot of young comedians in the audience for Bill Burr’s late show last night. As well there should be, for this is a masterclass in comic technique that almost any stand-up could learn from.

His compelling delivery also shows the dominance of method over message. Burr’s views – at least as stated – often do not conform to the consensus of the liberal Edinburgh Fringe, though he’s more than skilled enough to play that tension to his advantage.

Taken at face value, he is the Donald Trump of stand-up; using the language of the blue-collar bar-room philosopher to rail against imagined threats to an essentially privileged life as a white American male. Shut your whining that you’re paid less than men, he tells women in one extended routine, it levels out ‘cos we have to pay for everything on dates.

’I’m aware I’m coming across as a caveman,’ he acknowledges a couple of times, as a sop to today’s offence-sensitive climate. He also claims to be a feminist, despite the evidence he presents, along with describing himself as a ‘nice psycho’. It is testament to his skill as a stand-up, with a conversational yet forceful style, that he gets both sides laughing: both those who hope the sexism is steeped in irony and those who hail him as finally saying it like it is. Superficially, acting the misogynistic jerk is an easy path to winding people up, but there’s (usually) more layers to Burr’s approach than simple provocation.

He’s not politically correct on Caitlin Jenner, either, being suspicious of her decision not to undergo full gender reassignment surgery. Or ‘keeping his dick’ as Burr less sensitively puts it. The attitude is impolite, but that it’s so outlandish is precisely what makes it funny, and it’s backed up with some great lines.

Still with the intolerance, Burr also has no time for fat people portraying themselves as victims, leading to talk of how no one’s visiting McDonald’s for health food. This section’s a little more generic in its thought process, at least until it gets going, though even this is enlivened by Burr’s uncompromising, animated delivery and laser-guided bullshit destroyer.

None of this is in line with his assertion at the top of the show that the world frets about the trivial while the major issues – for him, genetically modified food and our evil Illuminati overlords – get swept under the carpet, since he, too, largely ignores the big stuff, or at best dismisses it. But actually this opening statement serves a different purpose: to place the whole ensuing 75 minutes or so in giant ironic quotation marks. You can’t take seriously anything that he’s saying: this is a moron who believes in conspiracy theories.

While his social commentary is entertaining and provocative, worth the price of admission alone is his silly bit about Koko, the gorilla who has been taught sign language in California. This is a tour-de-force routine showing an absolute commitment to an idea and running with it. Burr’s physicality is sublime, from acting out both sides of the communication in his cack-handed way, to imagining the ape being taught to walk like a human, getting frustrated by his early failings. It’s an entirely fabricated scenario, but feels so hilariously real.

The story is spun out into a fanciful tale, imagining the motives and actions of both gorilla and trainer way beyond what was contained YouTube video which alerted him to Koko in the first place. Yet Burr insists e still hasn’t got an ending he’s happy with, so incredible to think that this brilliant routine is still work in progress.

It could be enough to make a lot of those young comics quit in the sure knowledge they’ll never be this good.

4.5 stars


Doug Anthony All Stars (DAAS) Live On Stage

It’s pathetic really. A comedy band who once tore through Edinburgh on a whirlwind of hedonistic depravity and youthful vim reduced to this desperate attempt to cling onto the threads of that faded reputation. They are old and/or frail now, as are any fans who still hold any flicker of memory of them, yet they shuffle out for one final asthmatic hoorah, a cynical cash grab in which the sad old men tell dirty jokes as if they were still in any way shocking or relevant.

That, at least, is the back story Australia’s Doug Anthony All-Stars would have you believe, that after everything else turned to shit, charismatic frontman Paul McDermott was determined to have his moment in the sun again, 25 years after his last Fringe run. So he got the old band back together to recapture just a glimmer the long-gone youthful excesses. He drags out Tim Ferguson, now in a wheelchair because of his multiple sclerosis, against doctors’ orders. But original guitarist Richard Fidler won’t have any part of such a cockamamie scheme, so is replaced by an actual pensioner, Paul Livingston.

Luckily, the reality is very far from this. The trio may have lost one of their members, but they’ve not lost the spark. And it turns out that, if you do it right, there’s still a lot of mileage to be had in old blokes telling jokes about fisting – or disabilities.

Yes, Ferguson’s illness is used as an access-all-areas pass for the most offensive and obnoxious insults. There’s an audaciousness to the bad taste that draws gasps among the guffaws from an audience more used to pussyfooting around disability. Outrageous it may be, but it’s cathartic to be given licence to laugh at the taboo topic.

And they get away with it because of the palpable love between Ferguson and McDermott. What do friends do, at least in the UK and Australia? They viciously rip the piss out of each other. So the real insult to Ferguson would be NOT to mock his affliction.

He’s an enthusiastic participant in the jokes, incidentally, it’s not all one-way. He gets primal laughs from looking more disabled than he is, egged on by McDermott, who suddenly admonishes the crowd: ‘Just stop for a second and think what you’re laughing at.’

Elsewhere, Ferguson– once Australia’s answer to Chris Evans, as host of their version of Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush – effects a glassy-eyed reverie caused by his powerful meds kicking in, spark an absurd, whimsical ramblings.

It all contributes to an atmosphere of disruption and mischief, driven by the dynamic between the two old friends, who often seem to catch each other out with their outlandishness, causing each other to corpse. Livingston is rather sidelined to a few bits of physical clowning after an amusingly offbeat intro from his otherworldly alter-ego Flacco.

The dirty banter isn’t quite as potent as the more personal material, but the devilry still shines through. And, of course, being a band, there are songs, old classics such as I Fuck Dogs and their Gilbert-and-Sullivan style vignettes about depraved sexual practices, plus new ones such as Us and Ebola (to the tune of Lola). Personally, I wish they’d done KRSNA, but a boy can’t have everything.

Their lyrics aren’t the most inventive thing about the troupe, but they can certainly sing, and the songs have a surprisingly emotive power. Actually, the funniest was an apparently straight rendition of Brendan Behan’s The Auld Triangle, with a great visual gag running through.

Given this is likely their Edinburgh swansong, there can’t help but be a touch of poignancy behind all the dick jokes. This is well-executed via their haunting Warsong, performed as an original video played behind them, McDermott and Ferguson’s former selves haunting them like ghosts. Ferguson closes (more or less) with a ‘carpe diem’ speech from a man who learnt the hardest way that the time you have to do everything is finite. If you think this might be mawkish, you don’t know DAAS at all, but it is effective.

Seizing the chance to see the All Stars while you can, either in their last two Edinburgh appearances, or at the Soho Theatre next week, is certainly sage advice. Don’t and you will not only miss forever the chance to see Fringe legends on British soil; you’ll also be missing a transgressive ride, packed full of raw belly laughs, whether you remember them from the first time around or not.

5 stars


Adam Kay: Fingering A Minor On The Piano

Well, it worked. Adam Kay is well aware that the last few minutes of his show is the sort of viscerally raw and passionately delivered routine that critics lap up, nudging him into extra-star territory.

It’s a tearful, brutally honest summary of the heavy emotional toll his former job as an NHS doctor took on his relationship and his wellbeing. He’s clearly still haunted by one horrific incident, but is forcing himself to talk about it. Why? To send a message that dedicated medics are not in it for the money and shouldn’t be used as political pawns by health secretaries treating hospitals as some abstract management consultant exercise.

More importantly, this comes at the end of a more jaunty show. He’s getting his profound message out to a wide demographic of people who come out for a night of innuendo-laden songs and smutty banter – not preaching to a choir of fellow travellers.

However powerful it is, if this heartfelt coda had come at the end of a weak show, it wouldn’t have turned it around. However actually the whole hour builds up to this moment, but you’re too busy laughing to suspect a thing, as Kay reads from his old diaries charting his time working in London hospitals.

The tone is a bit Doctor In The House, if you remember Richard Gordon’s comic books, a warmly entertaining peak at the lot of a doctor, gloriously indecorous in revealing funny stories from the wards – from what consultants write in your notes to the gallows humour of the junior doctors. The story of the dodgy pulse readings was hilariously silly, and there are agonising medical catastrophes to make you wince – including, yes, the obligatory ‘foreign object up the jacksie' story. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing catalogue of interrupted holidays and cancelled date night batters Kay’s relationship, not to mention the sleep deprivation of working 90-plus-hour weeks.

Some of the material is surprisingly brutal, especially knowing it is based on real-life incidents. It may be delivered by a polite middle-class man rather than a swaggering stand-up boasting how edgy he is, but that juxtaposition only adds potency. And you can consider yourself forewarned about some of this, since he’s got away with the filthiest show title on the Fringe

Then there are the tunes. Kay’s reputation still largely rests on his viral hit of a more than a decade ago, London Underground – standard comic fare of rewriting hit record with rude language and generically amusing observations about the Tube. His stock in-trade is still essentially the same, but he’s smarter now, less obvious. If you suffer bad reactions to song parodies, Kay could have the cure.

He’s creative with his rewrites and most of the songs are quick in and outs, just enough to get the gag – which is, of course, always medically based. It’s not far from what spoof hospital DJ Ivan Brackenbury does without the negative connotations of musical comedy, but Kay has the advantage of being able to twist the lyrics for extra impact. You can have a bit of a game guessing where he’s going with the jaunty interludes, but he usually wrongfoots you. And indeed he does have an actual pub-quiz style game guessing the punchlines.

The jauntiness and recognition that comes from these songs is a reassuring counter to some of the more troubling stories from the job, even if he always delivers lightly. Always, that is, until that final moment kicks you in the gut.

4.5 stars


Joel Dommett: Pretending To Smoke With A Breadstick

Joel Dommett is the epitome of the ‘hey, guys!’, ‘right, guys?’ comedians, bubbling with excitable bonhomie as he bounces through his observations and stories of wild adventure.

But behind all that blustery banter is a very smartly constructed story, the interesting anecdotes and flippant routines skilfully weaved together to make a show that’s more than the sum of its parts.

Dommett has a good story to tell this year, after being catfished by an online ‘sextortion’ blackmailer who felt a whiff of an easy dollar as the comic’s celebrity rose. Plus he was on the rebound after a relationship failed, so easy prey for the flattery of the scam. But to say any more would be a spoiler.

He says his mantra this year is to stick to the truth, a hard restraint for a comedian who loves to exaggerate for the sake of a punchline. The Pretending To Smoke… headline refers to sense of cool he gets when delivering such a payoff, even if it’s not real.

So he heckles his own appearance on Russell Howard’s Good News with cries of ‘lies’ just to point out how much of his career is built on untruths – and blasts us with a delightfully over-the-top musical number showing what fun you can have with the childishly stupid with no care for veracity. But no, he insists, this is the year the story is 100 per cent true, even if he might wish another core anecdote, about a dating disaster, wasn’t.

Otherwise Dommett juggles seemingly disparate bits of stand-up about Christmas carols or rap singers or the time he appeared on a celebrity edition of The Chase with Sinitta, expressing disproportionately strong opinions on the way. Yet he finds ways to tie these things together.

A few gimmicky but effective bits of stagecraft create an inclusive, loose atmosphere in which his playful energy and can thrive, while he also engineers possibly the finest heckle put-down of the festival.

He could perhaps dial back his volume half a notch, and have the confidence to let some of the architecture of the show speak for itself, without pointing it out. But then it’s such a well-constructed hour, you can see why he’d want to brag.

4 stars


Richard Gadd: Monkey See Monkey Do

Over the past few years, Richard Gadd has built up a reputation for brutally intense shows underpinned with an aggressively dark humour that revels in the squalid and depraved. He’d debase himself for his art, usually sexually, as he poked at whatever part of his disturbed id drives him to such excesses, both in life and in performance.

Well now, after this extraordinary hour of candour – disturbing, bold and visceral – we know, as Gadd lays bare the blackest demons of his psyche like no other comedian, Kim Noble excepted.

Like its physical counterpart, this emotional roller-coaster may leave you disorientated, energised, and maybe a little sick. Monkey See Monkey Do is not for the faint of heart or for those seeking easy laughs – it’s a piece of progressive, deeply personal theatre presented through a comedian’s prism of absurdity. And you can’t imagine Michael McIntyre introducing an act on to his stage like that…

The titular monkey is what Gadd must get off his back,and is how he sees the primal ape brain that leads him to depression, whatever his more evolved cortexes might understand on a logical level. (It’s the idea of sports psychologist Steve Peters’s Chimp Paradox book). Gadd spends the duration of the show running from this ape… and not just metaphorically. He’s literally on a treadmill, recreating the real-life runs he undertakes to keep the darkness away, but also imbuing the whole hour with a desperate energy.

His inner monologue, along with the eclectic soundtrack on his iPhone, plays out as he recreates his anxieties. Most of the show is pre-recorded, absolving him of the responsibility for telling the the difficult story, but also freeing him to get some laughs, admittedly often uncomfortable ones, from his angst-ridden facial reactions, revealing himself to be a strong physical comic though those beads of sweat

Meanwhile the screen plays out scenes involving that monkey, an unpleasant mobile phone clip that shows just how real Gadd’s torment is, or, most courageously, recordings of the highly-charged psychodynamic therapy sessions he underwent to try to fix his unconscious, which is where the central revelation comes, a hard, unexpected punch.

The rawness of the story, the overwhelming experience of the multimedia presentation, and Gadd’s exceptional performance mean this is a show that will stay with you, even if the comedian himself acknowledges the shortfalls of a comedy show that’s ‘conceptual enough not to have to be funny’.

After putting himself, and his audiences, through the wringer over this hour, and over this preceding Fringe shows, too, he even offers a glimmer of optimism at the end – not that you’d ever surmise that this was a feelgood show. It is, however, likely to be one that’s the talk of the festival yet again.

4stars


Click here for all our reviews from 2016.

Published: 24 Aug 2020

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