Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Although this is their Fringe debut, Claire McFadden and Maureen Monahan have been performing as Spooky Dookie in their Chicago hometown and beyond for more than a decade. They have all the credits you’d expect from a credible US sketch outfit, including Saturday Night Live, The Onion and Second City.

That goes a long way to explaining why their hour is so slickly performed, bringing their tight chemistry and astute sense of timing to scenes that take in precise physical comedy and tuneful songs as well as more straightforward to-and-fro. They may have the enthusiastic vibes of former theatre kids, but they are using their powers for good.

The recurring sketch in Cool New Planet!! has the pair pitching their proposal to create a new destination between Mars and Venus to the board of directors of the universe. They are very excited about their idea, which will feature a river and giraffes and which they shall call Ermth.

Far be it from me to suggest McFadden and Monahan have been inspired by having projects stuck in Hollywood development hell, but their alter-egos have to contend with myriad stupid notes that compromise their idea, only for it to get dropped anyway. Still, who needs the system these days, now everyone can be an independent creator?

This through line is typical of the way the pair combine surreal ideas with satire, though sometimes the scales tip more in one direction than the other.

They are most directly scoring points when it comes to gender politics, such as the skit mocking the abject cluelessness of a dumb but over-promoted male Harvard graduate. And the sketch underlining the grim reality of a woman being taken for granted in an awful relationship with a misogynistic man teeters on the point of being more sad than funny. 

However, the idea that art can change anything is itself mocked as the pair smugly and ironically slap themselves on the back over their rewrites of Disney songs that highlight the harm of the princess narrative.

The scene involving two‘souls in the soup pool’ about to become humans is another idea making a point – this one about the inequities inherited by accident of birth.

Elsewhere, though, they lean more clearly into the silly, such as introducing Clever Charles, a hitherto overlooked US Founding Father who puts Alexander Hamilton to shame; coming up with names for things that’ll be found on their new planet; or spoofing the Grease plot in which the high-school goodie-two-shoes must develop a bad-girl side if she’s to land a jock boyfriend… although the way of achieving that is deluded, yet treated entirely seriously. 

And in probably the most absurd sketch, the shadow of depression becomes real, which is the best example of the imaginative, out-of-the-box thinking and pitch-perfect execution that’s apparent in every scene.

Review date: 15 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House