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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!)

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.