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Blog News, reviews and cool stuff from the FestBuzz team.

Festbuzz Review: Glenn Wool

Posted by stevie on August 24, 2009

by Underbelly Limited

What: Glenn Wool
Where: Underbelly’s Hul­la­baloo
When: until the 31st of August, 21:45 every night
How much: £10-£15

In 140 char­ac­ters or fewer: “One man Cana­dian wreck­ing spree tells us why the world is going to hell in a hilar­i­ous hour of scream­ing and ridicu­lous facial expressions”

Cana­dian exports to Britain have been a bit lim­ited over the years: Celine Dion, oil and gas and, dare I say it, club­bing. Wool has never been con­sid­ered a top export, until now.

In Glenn Wool, Canada has a mis­placed off­spring worth scream­ing about. Hav­ing lived in Britain for the last ten years, Wool can quite com­fort­ably avoid the trite mate­r­ial com­par­ing the two sides of the Atlantic which blights so many North Amer­i­can come­di­ans attempt­ing to cap­ti­vate Edin­burgh audiences.

From the first minute of his set, Wool had the crowd in the kind of stitches only caused by the most inap­pro­pri­ate of unscripted jokes. Befriend­ing a lonely crowd mem­ber is one thing, but find­ing out she was only 16 year old led to a hasty retreat and much hilar­ity all around the small but per­fectly formed com­edy set.

Wool car­ries him­self in a dis­arm­ing man­ner; dress­ing like some rejected off­spring of Jack Black, it takes only a few sec­onds to realise this is a ruse behind which lurks a fear­some intel­li­gence. Top­ics range from sex­ual eti­quette, the rea­sons why poor peo­ple should never, ever be lent money (vodka and socks) and why we should fun­da­men­tally dis­trust any­one in a suit. This is all set against tales of his Moun­tie father and bears being knocked out with one punch.

Wool’s great­est asset is his act­ing skills. He can play any role required in order to gain a laugh. He can make an every­day state­ment into a superb piece of com­edy with the kind of eye­brow lift which would make wrestling super­star The Rock extremely proud.

To begin with, Wool puts him­self on the line in an hon­est, self dep­re­cat­ing and often hilar­i­ous man­ner. It is only when he departs into sto­ries of why the wider world is in great peril that he really ups the tempo. This man can scream. At times, his voice edges dan­ger­ously close to Zed from Police Acad­emy 2. When he screams though, the audi­ence roars in approval. He has angst in his soul but the set would be ster­ile with­out it.

If you seek a bible class on how to live an hon­est, decent and depraved life out­side of the cor­po­rate sys­tem which has brought the world econ­omy to its knees, then Wool is your man. Always angry, but simul­ta­ne­ously endear­ing, his mes­sage is clear – “The most trust­wor­thy peo­ple I know don’t wear suits, they wear Iron Maiden T-shirts”.

A dude with a brain and a hell of a lot of issues, Glenn Wool is not to be missed.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Ste­vie Kearney

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Festbuzz Review: Late Night Gimp Fight

Posted by elise on August 21, 2009

Image by Tom Pullen

What: Late Night Gimp Fight fea­tur­ing Lee Grif­fiths, Richard Camp­bell, David Moon, Matt Ralph, and Paul Richard Big­gin.
Where: Pleas­ance Hut
When: 11pm, until Mon­day 31 August
How Much: £7.50-£10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Late Night Gimp Fight: If you don’t enjoy this there is some­thing wrong with you.”

There’s a lot of energy in the Pleas­ance Hut as Late Night Gimp Fight unfolds before the audi­ence. Pos­si­bly the most fre­netic thing you’ll ever see after 11pm at night, this is a gag-heavy and non-stop hour of gimp-based fun.

To be fair, this prob­a­bly isn’t the wit­ti­est show at the fringe but for some­thing so puerile it’s ulti­mately very intel­li­gent and gets the audi­ence on-side very quickly. Gimp Fight uses music in its favour, and unlike some sketch groups isn’t try­ing to bor­row the sex­i­ness from the musi­cal stings. Cer­tainly not if their bizarre mutual sex­ual assault sketch to a Bon­nie Tyler hit is any­thing to go by.

There are some good call backs and run­ning gags, and its all very friendly despite the sin­is­ter and inter­mit­tent recur­rence of masked gimps. This show was quite eas­ily the fastest hour you’ll spend in at a Fringe com­edy show: there’s sim­ply no stop­ping these guys. The audi­ence roared with laugh­ter through­out, per­haps helped a lit­tle by the 11pm slot, but there cer­tainly weren’t any dull moments.

Great skethces to watch out for include: Juras­sic Park (as you’ve never seen it, or not seen it, before); a pre-war pep talk with more puns than you can lit­er­ally shake a stick at; and a pro­fes­sional wrestler Dad (you will wince in fake pain).

Pos­si­bly the only crit­i­cism is that while the film and TV ref­er­ences are recog­nis­able, that’s because they are all quite old ref­er­ences: these guys only get away with a Matrix par­ody because the girl next to me almost fell off her chair when they brought out the “bullets”.

If you’re look­ing for bawdy but intel­li­gi­ble fun the place to find it is the Late Night Gimp Fight. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: Superclump

Posted by elise on August 20, 2009

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What: Super­clump fea­tur­ing  Henry Paker, Henry Widdicombe,Sian Har­ries, Mike Woz­niak, Elis James, Ben Par­tridge, Tom Craine, Josh Wid­di­combe, and Nat Luurt­sema.
Where: The GRV
When: 2.40pm, until Sun­day 30 August
How Much: £5

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “If they can just get the tim­ing as fast as a speed­ing bul­let Super­clump will become a sketch group of steel.”

I’m not sure how many peo­ple are in Super­clump. I could find out but I pre­fer to be hap­pily daz­zled and mys­ti­fied by the array of char­ac­ters this large and enthu­si­as­tic cast play.

This is a bizarre sketch show, with some Big Train-ish moments and lash­ings of stu­pid dances. It holds together well, but the pac­ing some­times loses its way, leav­ing the audi­ence unsure when to applaud. Some sketches were just too long (a bril­liant stand off between two macho lothar­ios loses it’s way try­ing to get to a pun) and oth­ers just too short (the annoy­ing Red Rid­ing Hood and her short tem­pered grandmother).

The act­ing for the most part is pretty strong: Mike Woz­niak is absolutely on top form, and he clearly leads the group on stage. Tom Craine and Nat Luurt­sema get some of the best lines, but it’s a real team effort over­all and there’s some­thing delight­ful about watch­ing sketches where you’re never sure quite how many more peo­ple will end up on stage.

The team are quite suc­cess­ful in get­ting all their per­son­al­i­ties across, despite play­ing a vari­ety of char­ac­ters with­out break­ing the fourth wall par­tic­u­larly often, though it was a charm­ing and reveal­ing moment to see Craine and Elis James corps­ing in the Aesop sketch. It’s clear there is a cen­tral drive to the sense of humour which makes Super­clump great, and with such a large cast they could have eas­ily lost their way with this.

In order to really get the most out of this show, watch out for when sketches take a darker turn: a dance turns bizarrely vio­lent, chil­dren play some very odd games, and just wait until you find out what’s in the party bags…

There are def­i­nitely a few dud moments they could scrap in this show, and it suf­fers mildly from the post-lunch sleepy slot, but when Super­clump shine they really dazzle.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: The Comedy Reserve

Posted by Jodi on August 20, 2009

What: The Com­edy Reserve
Where: Pleas­ance Dome
When: 8 — 31 August (not 18 and 25)
How Much: £7.50 — £8.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Doc Brown intro­duces a mish–mash of up-and-coming come­di­ans. Be warned — qual­ity varies considerably.”

In the­ory, The Com­edy Reserve is a great idea. Three up-and-coming come­di­ans share an hour-long show with a respected, but still rel­a­tively unknown comic per­form­ing com­pere duties. In prac­tice, how­ever, it’s some­thing alto­gether less than the sum of its parts. Doc Brown, London-based rap­per turned stand-up and brother to author Zadie Smith, cer­tainly per­forms the role of MC to the height of his con­sid­er­able abil­i­ties adding such much needed cohe­sive­ness to a bill of come­di­ans, each with an entirely dif­fer­ent con­cept of humour.

Jared Hardy is barely on stage before launch­ing into an excep­tion­ally self-deprecating rou­tine which, try as it might, can’t quite recover after the audi­ence loses con­fi­dence early on. Hardy claims to resem­ble “an emo Harry Pot­ter” but with his slight West Coun­try lilt, painfully scrawny frame and the admis­sion that he hails from Bris­tol, the char­ac­ter Sid from Skins is per­haps a more appro­pri­ate com­par­i­son. Like his small-screen coun­ter­part, Hardy appears ago­nis­ingly awk­ward and, while endear­ing in some small way, seems out of his depth in front of an Edin­burgh crowd.

Cana­dian comic Pat Burtscher (or “Pat Butcher!” as a lady in the next seat squealed with delight), by con­trast, seems excep­tion­ally sure of him­self though appears entirely unaware of the fact. Whether drug-induced or oth­er­wise, Burtscher spends the early part of his short set in a stu­por, only snap­ping out of it to bat­tle an errant mic stand. By the time he finally man­ages to attain some­thing vaguely resem­bling lucid­ity, he’s riff­ing off the sex­ual dif­fer­ences between men and women, end­ing in an out­ra­geous — and excru­ci­at­ing — mas­tur­ba­tion gag. Burtscher is cer­tainly an intense per­former but his dozey demeanour and crass pay­offs are some­thing of a let-down.

Final act Chris Stokes is a minor rev­e­la­tion after the pre­vi­ous two comics. Like Hardy, Stokes plays on themes of per­sonal dep­re­ca­tion and poor esteem but pos­sesses just enough self-assurance to pull it off. He is a decon­struc­tivist, play­ing on social mis­con­cep­tions and dis­man­tling them on stage. The pace is slow and mean­der­ing but there’s a sur­re­al­is­tic ele­ment that acts as a smoke screen, keep­ing the audi­ence dis­tracted while Stokes weaves addi­tional lay­ers into the fab­ric of a some­times thin ini­tial joke. His per­sonal life proves a rich source of mate­r­ial, as tales of his veg­an­ism and of liv­ing with his flat­mate are used as spring­boards for intro­duc­ing new con­cepts. It’s dif­fi­cult to see a rel­a­tively off­beat act like Chris Stokes truly going main­stream but the come­dian can cer­tainly expect to attract a cult fol­low­ing if this per­for­mance is any indication.

There are undoubt­edly laughs to be had at The Com­edy Reserve but with Doc Brown con­fined to his role as Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies, it’s left to Chris Stokes to lift the show above the level set by Hardy and Burtscher. As it is, he can’t quite man­age it sin­gle–hand­edly and his com­plex, dead­pan rou­tine may prove some­thing of a turnoff for many. Was the ticket price for The Com­edy Reserve a cou­ple of pounds cheaper it might seem a more rea­son­able prospect but as it is, it’s hard not to come away with at least a slight sense of disappointment.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Jodi Mullen

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Festbuzz Review: The Early Edition

Posted by Jodi on August 20, 2009

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What: The Early Edi­tion (Mar­cus Brig­stocke and Andre Vin­cent)
Where: Udder­belly
When: 12.25pm daily until 30 August
How Much: £10 — £12.50.

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Brig­stocke, Vin­cent and guests bring TV panel show to life with mixed results.”

The panel show has become ubiq­ui­tous on tele­vi­sion over the last few years as Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats have blurred the line between news and com­edy with sharp writ­ing, care­fully cal­cu­lated gags and slick pro­duc­tion. It’s a com­pelling, if for­mu­laic, approach to TV com­edy, which, with a lit­tle bit of edi­to­r­ial magic, gives the impres­sion of a thirty minute bar­rage of con­stant gags. It’s jar­ring then, to see the for­mat trans­planted directly into a live envi­ron­ment, warts and all.

The Early Edi­tion, the live descen­dant of Mar­cus Brig­stocke and Andre Vincent’s irrev­er­ent tele­vi­sion panel show The Late Edi­tion, sticks to much the same for­mat as it has in pre­vi­ous years at the Fringe. Brig­stocke and Vin­cent, along with a pair of panel guests, dis­sect the day’s news­pa­pers (“and the Daily Mail”) in front of a live audi­ence. Save a few sta­ple gags, the show is almost entirely impro­vised and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion is actively encour­aged. Inevitably, over­all qual­ity varies some­what depend­ing on how brisk the day’s news is and on how suc­cess­fully the guest stars inter­act with the hosts.

Of the two stal­warts, Mar­cus Brig­stocke essen­tially acts as anchor­man. Not only does he keep the show roughly on track, he facil­i­tates most of the exchanges between audi­ence and per­form­ers and leads with some of the juici­est news sto­ries. As ever, he’s bit­ing and sar­cas­tic though rarely strays too close to con­tro­versy. Andre Vin­cent, on the other hand, is brash and loud and careers head­long into del­i­cate top­ics with all the sub­tlety of an enraged wilde­beast. In spite, or per­haps because of, this how­ever, Vin­cent is the only panel mem­ber to really step away from safe mate­r­ial and take risks. His won­der­fully taste­less one-liners about 9/11 and basement-dwelling Aus­trian fam­i­lies may get a few groans but they’re cer­tainly memorable.

Though nom­i­nally appear­ing as a panel guest on The Early Edi­tion, Car­rie Quin­lan has been a reg­u­lar on the show since it first ran in Edin­burgh in 2007 and is by now as much a head­line name as either Brig­stocke or Vin­cent. Quin­lan tends to grav­i­tate towards softer sto­ries and off­sets some of Vincent’s blus­ter and Brigstocke’s acer­bic wit though her brand of humour is no less inci­sive, despite the mate­r­ial she chooses to work with. The sec­ond guest slot rotates daily and has been filled by such lumi­nar­ies as Phil Jupi­tus, Stew­art Lee and Ed Byrne in the past. On the day Fes­t­buzz popped along to the show, Amer­i­can come­dian Jamie Kil­stein was sit­ting in on the panel.

Back home Kil­stein has cul­ti­vated a cer­tain level of infamy as a bit­ing left-wing comic, loudly tout­ing his athe­ism and veg­an­ism as well as rad­i­cal polit­i­cal polemics. Despite his fire­brand rep­u­ta­tion, how­ever, Kil­stein is sur­pris­ingly tame. His rebut­tal to the right-wing sav­aging of the NHS in the Amer­i­can press is cer­tainly timely but lacks real bite. Oth­er­wise, he plays it safe stick­ing to tried-and-tested rou­tines about the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, US insu­lar­ity… noth­ing we haven’t heard before a dozen times over.Kilstein is clearly capa­ble of much greater things, beg­ging the ques­tion of why he chooses to regur­gi­tate the same kind of low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor polit­i­cal mate­r­ial that has seen both Janeane Garo­falo and Rich Hall take a beat­ing from the crit­ics this year.

While The Early Edi­tion is cer­tainly an enter­tain­ing way to spend a lunchtime, it remains too closely tied to the tele­vi­sion panel show for­mat. At an hour, it feels overly long, as if attempt­ing to jus­tify the cost of admis­sion. While the show picks up towards the end, the mid­dle seems flabby and lack­ing in struc­ture. With the absence of an editor,the cracks in the for­mat really begin to show in a live envi­ron­ment and the audi­ence is left at some­thing of a loose end. Though The Early Edi­tion is cer­tainly worth check­ing out, it seems that Brig­stocke and Vin­cent may need to rework the for­mat before bring­ing it back for another run in 2010.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Jodi Mullen

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Festbuzz Review: Ballad of the Skull Fairy

Posted by Domenica on August 19, 2009

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What: Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy by The Stealth Fan­tas­tic
Where: Under­belly
When: 6 — 15 August
How Much: £6 — £10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “A rol­lick­ing phan­tas­mago­ria of mur­der, betrayal, good, evil, skulls, giant squids, arm-flailing, and obscene poems from the West Country!”

Part of the magic of the Fringe is the dizzy­ingly hap­haz­ard lay­out of the per­for­mances: the­atre for break­fast, per­haps, with a quick dose of com­edy to perk you up after work and maybe a musi­cal as the cen­tre­piece of an evening. Then there are the late-night per­for­mances, the type you some­times stum­ble into after one drink too many, and which seem like a bril­liant idea at the time. I sus­pect this was the case for more than a few mem­bers of the audi­ence at the Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy, though the addi­tion of a bit of alco­hol would no doubt help this mish­mash of silly com­edy go down a lit­tle better.

The show (for the per­form­ers them­selves openly admit that Bal­lad is not a play and was in fact mis­la­belled in the Fringe cat­a­logue as the­atre) loosely fol­lows the quest of the impres­sion­able Marc (Marc Vestey) to pro­cure a skull for his evil lord, the Skull Fairy (Will Sea­ward) in order to become a skull prince. What Marc doesn’t know is that the Skull Fairy actu­ally intends to hit him over the head with the skull, and then kill the king of China in the same man­ner and begin his dom­i­na­tion of the world. Or some­thing like that. To be hon­est, the plot hardly mat­ters, as it is so vague and inci­den­tal to the bursts of sur­real phys­i­cal com­edy and witty word­play that are intended to be the main attrac­tion. How­ever, the end result is a per­for­mance that drifts some­where between the­atre and stand-up with­out ever cap­tur­ing the best ele­ments of either.

It’s a pity, as writer/director/performer Sea­ward and his side­kick Vestey pos­sess character-acting tal­ent and humour to spare. Sea­ward is the cre­ator of the hugely pop­u­lar “Bouncy Cas­tle Exper­i­ment”, in which ver­sions of Ham­let, Mac­beth and Drac­ula were pre­car­i­ously staged on bouncy cas­tles at fes­ti­vals past. Over the last few years these irrev­er­ent offer­ings became high­lights of the Fringe. Unfor­tu­nately, Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy seems unlikely to fol­low this trend. While the per­for­mance is very funny, in a mad, slap­stick, some­times utterly ran­dom man­ner, and does con­tain the ele­ments adver­tised on the tin (skulls, tib­ias, gra­tu­itous giant squids, arm-flailing and obscene poems), the viewer is ulti­mately left won­der­ing what is the point of it all.

The show is akin to watch­ing a pair of very clever drama school stu­dents goof­ing off in the high school cafe­te­ria – enter­tain­ing and amus­ing, but aside from the odd one-liner, hardly mem­o­rable. The audi­ence gig­gled and guf­fawed aplenty, but I sus­pect many even­tu­ally grew a bit weary of the out­right silli­ness of it all. If the show had been struc­tured and pre­sented as stand-up or even comedic sketches, or else pinned more securely to a well-crafted plot, Sea­ward and Vestey’s abil­i­ties would have found a bet­ter show­case. As it stands, how­ever, Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy is best left as a late-night bit of fun to fin­ish off an evening’s mer­ri­ment, with­out too many expectations.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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Festbuzz Review: Idiots of Ants

Posted by elise on August 19, 2009

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Who: Idiots of Ants
Where: Pleas­ance Over the Road 2
When: 8.15pm, daily until 31st August 2009 (not 24th)
How Much: £8.50-£10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “The slick indie band of com­edy have noth­ing left to prove– except their identity.”

I knew I had noth­ing to fear in the capa­ble hands of pop­u­lar sketch group Idiots of Ants: these boys leave noth­ing to chance and their tim­ing is almost per­fectly sculpted. How­ever, as I looked down through the rail­ings in the venue (Pleas­ance Over the Road 2), the feel­ing of being removed from the per­for­mance was unavoid­able. With a strong use of mul­ti­me­dia (music stings, video, pho­tog­ra­phy and other audio-visual trick­ery) this does occa­sion­ally feel like watch­ing a show on TV. The boys have ami­able per­sonae and they are not with­out their oblig­a­tory young female fan base in the audience.

How­ever, not every­one is con­nect­ing with them.

Idiots of Ants’ sketches lib­er­ally ref­er­ence every­thing from sci fi to war films, from pop cul­ture to video games, though this some­times becomes a lit­tle unwieldy, with laughs from dif­fer­ent areas of the audi­ence at dif­fer­ent times. While this shows a broad range of appeal, it isn’t mas­sively cohe­sive and raises the ques­tion of who they are aim­ing their show at.

The strongest sketches lie in unpre­dictable moments: the video game sketch in par­tic­u­lar is a real treat, and the only point when the audi­ence inter­ac­tion really works. It also is invalu­able to see the boys riff­ing off each other in a slightly less rehearsed way. Though the thor­ough rehearsal and strong tim­ing can be appre­ci­ated the­atri­cally, the lack of abil­ity to come fully out of char­ac­ter and engage the audi­ence is what mars this oth­er­wise bril­liant performance.

This is a great hour of excel­lent enter­tain­ment, and it’s both visu­ally excit­ing and most impor­tantly funny. While the finale lacks a really good the punch­line, the energy level never drops and there’s never a lull in proceedings.

Every­one can hope to look for­ward to great things from Idiots of Ants: they are a tight knit group, and if they can just let their fans in a lit­tle bit more and let them find out who they really are, they could go stellar.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: Rich Hall

Posted by elise on August 19, 2009

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Who: Rich Hall
Where: Assem­bly Rooms
When: 10.30pm, daily until 31st August 2009
How Much: £13-£16

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Morose, witty and acer­bic: you’re in safe hands with Rich Hall– per­haps a lit­tle too safe.”

Rich Hall is per­fectly happy in front of a crowd of some 600 peo­ple, and they seem pretty damn happy to sit there as well. This show isn’t loaded polit­i­cal satire, but as Hall points out, he lost a large chunk of mate­r­ial with Bush out of office.

Despite his rise to fame in a char­ac­ter act, Hall has become a panel show stal­wart in the last few years and is well known for his gruff bark and his abil­ity to play the wit­less naif in the face of odd British cus­toms. In tonight’s show he is repeat­edly dive-bombed by an assort­ment of moths and flies: he con­fi­dently riffs off this and even man­ages to briefly catch one of his insect per­se­cu­tors, a handy metaphor for his quick wit and sharp instincts.

How­ever, this show is slightly dogged by the lack of struc­ture to the hour. Though Hall rarely seems to get off track, there’s no obvi­ous thread to his train of thought, and while the gags are strong, there’s not much sub­stance. Hall is best when he’s rail­ing against the world and its mis­takes, and he seems far more con­tent with life now than per­haps a few years ago.

Per­haps the nicest moments in this show come from his sto­ries of rural life in Mon­tana, deal­ing with prairie dog pests and fear­some locals. His irri­ta­tion at these irk­some crit­ters gets him more fired up than in most bits of the show: though he never lets this rant get unwieldy. Unable to really mock Obama (the clos­est he gets is point­ing out The Audac­ity of Hope is a some­what mean­ing­less title) in the cur­rent cli­mate, he turns his gaze on Bill Clin­ton which makes the mate­r­ial feel a lit­tle out of date. How­ever, he’s clearly still clued up about polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions and I’m dis­ap­pointed that in the ques­tion and answer sec­tion all he is quizzed about it whether he enjoys QI.

Despite some forced moments of audi­ence inter­ac­tion, Hall has a large back cat­a­logue of sto­ries and jokes to draw from, and it’s great to hear him when he gets fired up at some odd inter­na­tional news story.

There’s no bite to this show, but it’s slick, ratio­nal, well paced.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Follow the Twitter Comedy Event Live!

Posted by Jennie on August 14, 2009

News­flash!

You can fol­low the live twit­ter com­edy event — kick­ing off in just 10 min­utes — through our spe­cially con­structed sites: the ‘twit­ter­fall’ that updates in real-time, or if you’ve missed a gig, try the ‘recap’.

Of course, you could always be bor­ing and use Twit­ter Search instead!

(Note: We’re expe­ri­enc­ing some time­outs with the Twit­ter Search API tonight, so you might do as well. Typical!)

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Live Twitter Comedy — tonight!

Posted by Jennie on August 14, 2009

Tonight, we’re host­ing Scotland’s first live twit­ter com­edy event smack bang in the mid­dle of the Offi­cial Fringe Party, the “Twinge Party”.

At 7pm, you’d bet­ter be tuned into Twit­ter, as a lineup of top come­di­ans will be deliv­er­ing a series of jokes… in 140-character bites. By fol­low­ing the event’s hash­tag (to be released later today) you’ll be able to tune into the buzz and the backchat, but if you want an unin­ter­rupted front-row seat, tune into our spe­cial Twit­ter Com­edy web page to see nowt but the jokes.

At the Twinge Party itself, one screen will project the come­di­ans’ sets and another will show the crowd’s responses to their jokes, about the party and other acts. It will be a great chance for peo­ple to get a taste of what’s on offer this year at the Fes­ti­vals, whether they are at the party itself or just log­ging on from home.

The Twinge Party, spon­sored by Infor­mat­ics Ven­tures, is being run by Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe.

The first Twit­ter Com­edy event, organ­ised by up-and-coming stand-up Tier­nan Douieb, went live in June this year, and was highly suc­cess­ful with thou­sands of “view­ers” log­ging on from around the world to watch, read, laugh and tweet heck­les back at the acts. The Twinge Party will repli­cate some of this com­edy buzz with a short series of Twit­ter sets, with the acts tweet­ing live from the party to the world.

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