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

Festbuzz Review: Dylan Moran

Posted by Jodi on August 14, 2009

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Who: Dylan Moran
Where: Play­house
When: Mon 10 and Tues 11 August
How Much: £20

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Dylan Moran: a slightly unhinged genius walk­ing the fine line between mad­ness and comic brilliance.”

After nearly a year and a half on the road in sup­port of his lat­est show, What It Is, Dylan Moran finally returns to his adopted home­town of Edin­burgh for a two-night stand at the Play­house at the height of the Fes­ti­val. Yet antic­i­pa­tion and excite­ment are tem­pered by appre­hen­sion after a slew of mixed reviews for the cur­rent tour. The Irish­man has recently been accused of look­ing dis­in­ter­ested on stage, dis­con­nected from his audi­ence, of giv­ing the impres­sion that gigs are an ordeal to be endured, a tire­some dis­trac­tion between glasses of wine.

Not so tonight. Whether invig­o­rated by the energy of a home­town crowd or sim­ply feed­ing off the buzz of the city dur­ing the Fringe, Moran is elec­tric. Elo­quent, intense and engag­ing, he seizes on audi­ence cues and impro­vises freely. A cough, a heckle, the sight of cam­er­a­phone set him off on mean­der­ing tan­gents. The ad-libbed sec­tions never feel out of place though he sheep­ishly con­fesses to los­ing track of the script on more than one occasion.

As ever, Moran’s stage per­sona is an amal­gam of Bernard Black, his cel­e­brated Black Books char­ac­ter, and a dis­il­lu­sioned exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, neatly pick­led in wine. Rather than rely­ing on jokes and punch­lines, the Irish­man blends the mun­dane with the sur­real, his astute obser­va­tions bal­anced by won­der­fully absurd mixed metaphors and witty word­play. And while his yarns rarely hold up well to re-telling, every so often a sin­gle phrase reduces the audi­ence to tears of laughter.

Nowhere is his sub­tle brand of humour bet­ter show­cased than his Scottish-themed mate­r­ial, appar­ently writ­ten spe­cially for the brace of Edin­burgh shows. He gen­tly probes the rivalry between the cap­i­tal and Glas­gow. How­ever, rather than falling back on the Glaswe­gian stereo­type per­pet­u­ated by the likes of Frankie Boyle, Moran instead cel­e­brates the virtues of the West Coast city before coyly inform­ing the audi­ence that, “The dif­fer­ence between Glas­gow and Edin­burgh is, well, Edin­burgh is like the begin­ning of a wed­ding. Glas­gow is what’s left afterwards.”

Moran is well capa­ble of hold­ing his own against other per­form­ers when it comes to pol­i­tics, sci­ence and other sta­ple top­ics but is at his best when deal­ing with more human issues — plea­sure, pain, life, death, love, sex — and lift­ing the veil on his per­sonal life. His comic threads are spun from whimsy and anec­dote and weave a colour­ful tapes­try that exposes the deeply-buried, and often hilar­i­ous, truths about human rela­tion­ships and behaviour.

Yet for all his post-modern, decon­struc­tivist blus­ter, Moran’s ram­bling tales are ulti­mately life-affirming, under­pinned by a gen­uine warmth and a sense that, in spite of all else, love, fam­ily and guilty plea­sures are at the heart of what makes us human and are to be cher­ished. While the main set peters out rather than com­ing to a sat­is­fac­tory con­clu­sion, a superb encore more than makes amends for any short­com­ings. In a show last­ing an hour and a half — half as long again as the stan­dard What It Is set — Dylan Moran is a con­stant delight, a slightly unhinged genius walk­ing the fine line between mad­ness and comic brilliance.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Jodi Mullen

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Festbuzz Review: Chris Cox — Mind Over Patter

Posted by elise on August 12, 2009

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Who: Chris Cox
Where: Pleas­ance King Dome
When: 8.30pm, Wed 12 Aug — Mon 31 Aug
How Much: £8-£9.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Chris Cox has plenty up his sleeves in this con­fi­dent & rather sweet magic show. Mind read­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal trick­ery & good laughs abound.”

Chris Cox is a slight, geeky look­ing boy who is so sin­cere when he admits to spend­ing much of his youth in his bed­room with a Paul Daniels’ magic set that it’s almost impos­si­ble to doubt him. How­ever, he’s remark­ably at home on stage and the audi­ence instantly warm to him. It seems his rep­u­ta­tion as a reg­u­lar Radio 1 guest goes before him, though it’s not imme­di­ately obvi­ous how magic can work on radio, the least visual of mediums.

Cox’s main “trick” is mind-reading, though he repeat­edly makes the dis­claimer that he can’t read minds. Der­ren Brown is an obviosu com­par­i­son, though the truth is that Brown’s pat­ter about psy­chol­ogy etc. is as much a part of his dis­trac­tion tech­niques as his jokes, so I’m on my guard already as Cox starts ref­er­enc­ing psy­chol­o­gists and soci­ol­o­gists like Stan­ley Milgram.

Watch­ing a magi­cian with a crit­i­cal eye is much like watch­ing a come­dian in the same man­ner: you’re wait­ing to see which way they are direct­ing you in order to work out where the surprise/punchline/magic will actu­ally be. And like watch­ing a come­dian, this crit­i­cal appraisal can ruin the humour by tak­ing the fun out of it. How­ever, it’s good fun try­ing to work out how Cox’s tricks work as he seem­ingly bum­bles through them. There’s lots of dis­trac­tion ele­ments, some good jokes, audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, lots of puns on the magician’s sur­name and some cre­ative set-ups. By using Face­book, iTunes and his lap­top Cox presents a very mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of the ancient arcane arts.

I con­fess, how­ever, that I had a pretty good idea how Chris did every sin­gle one of his tricks and I do think some of the ear­lier stunts in the show needed a lit­tle more work on tim­ing so the cracks in their facade aren’t quite so appar­ent. How­ever, most of the pat­ter was slick, and his charisma car­ried the audi­ence along nicely. He deserved the gasps of awe he got, though he also deserved a few groans for some of the puns. A great night out!

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: Scott Mills — The Musical

Posted by elise on August 12, 2009

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What: Scott Mills — The Musi­cal
Where: Pleas­ance One
When: 10.30pm, Tue 11  —  Fri 14 Aug
How Much: Free (see venue for small ticket allo­ca­tion from 8am daily)

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Scott Mills is def­i­nitely one to make a song and dance over. A musi­cal with panache, self-referential humour and great tunes.”

I’m not tra­di­tion­ally a lover of musi­cals. But some­how within the open­ing moments of last night’s debut per­for­mance of Scott Mills: The Musi­cal, I was swept away with energy and humour and found myself ador­ing it.

I had been warned that as I’m not a die-hard fan of Radio 1, (I’ve felt a bit too old to be lis­ten­ing to it since I left uni­ver­sity and words like “bare” inex­plic­a­bly changed their mean­ing), I might be a bit left out and not get all the in-jokes. For­tu­nately the musi­cal was a grand mix of ref­er­ences, half-truths, celebrity appear­ances, par­o­dies of pop­u­lar TV shows and some great digs at the man­age­ment struc­ture at Radio 1 — there really was was some­thing for sim­ply everyone.

Joe Tay­lor is charm­ing and buoy­ant as the show’s epony­mous star and gets the tone just right by play­ing the role (in a the­atri­cal sense) straight. Lau­rie Hagen is a bit of a scene-stealer as chirpy side­kick Becky. Her sig­na­ture love theme ”Not Allowed’ has some great lines and the chem­istry between Hagen and Guy Lewis as man­ager Rob is palpable.

Spe­cial high­lights include pre-recorded video nar­ra­tion from The Hoff, cameos by Scott Mills as The Hoff, and a ver­sion of YMCA that I will pos­si­bly never get out of my head.

If Scot Mills: the Musi­cal is lack­ing at any point,  it’s per­haps only the danc­ing which lacks the pol­ish of the rest of the show. It isn’t quite per­fect but given the fast turn­around of this fan-inspired piece, it’s cer­tainly of an accept­able qual­ity. Judg­ing by the furore this musi­cal is cre­at­ing across Face­book, unof­fi­cial fan sites and Twit­ter, it will go down in Radio 1 his­tory as some­thing truly spe­cial. I am hope­ful they will take it down south for a run at some stage too as this has the poten­tial for very real, wide-ranging appeal.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: Phil Nichol

Posted by Jodi on August 7, 2009

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Who: Phil Nichol
Where: The Stand Com­edy Club II
When: Fri 7 — Sun 30 Aug (not 17)
How Much: £10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Cana­dian comic Phil Nichol turns manic lounge singer. Cash meets Sina­tra is a storm of tequila, swear­ing and song.”

Musi­cal com­edy is all the rage in Edin­burgh this year. Since David O’Doherty took last year’s If.comedy award at the Fringe for Let’s Com­edy, his whim­si­cal col­lec­tion of odd­ball songs, tapped out on a tiny key­board, other per­form­ers have re-invented them­selves as all-singing (and, more rarely, all danc­ing) com­edy acts. The Irish­man is a tough act to fol­low though. The last few years have seen the bar for tune-based com­edy raised to dizzy­ing new heights as comics like Bill Bai­ley and Doc Brown have pushed the medium far beyond the bound­aries of bawdy three-chord sin­ga­longs and trite lyri­cal parodies.

Enter Phil Nichol. The Cana­dian come­dian, a for­mer mem­ber of com­edy song­ster trio Corky and the Juice Pigs,  has aban­doned his now famil­iar stand-up rou­tine in favour of an out­ra­geous over-the-top musi­cal show at this year’s Fringe. A Dead­pan Poet Sings Quiet Songs Qui­etly sees Nichol take to the stage with slicked-back hair, a wide grin and a dap­per suit, acoustic gui­tar hang­ing from his shoul­der; think Johnny Cash meets Frank Sina­tra after a few tequi­las too many. He’s accom­pa­nied by a jazz pianist and a dou­ble bass player who add a care­fully cal­cu­lated air of pre­ten­tious­ness to the pro­ceed­ings, together with their finely-honed chops and back­ing vocals.

Despite the change in for­mat, Nichol’s trade­mark dead­pan humour has sur­vived the tran­si­tion to musi­cal com­edy fully intact. He’s witty and cut­ting, with absolutely impec­ca­ble deliv­ery, as unex­pected lyri­cal twists leave the audi­ence writhing in mirth. The songs them­selves form the back­bone of the show and direct audi­ence inter­ac­tion, while not entirely absent, is kept to a min­i­mum. Nichol remains in char­ac­ter through­out, a brood­ing, cyn­i­cal vet­eran of a thou­sand lounge per­for­mances, deter­mined to inflict his mis­ery upon the world. The sub­ject mat­ter ranges from darkly comic per­sonal dia­tribes to sur­pris­ingly inci­sive crit­i­cisms of PC cul­ture, all held together by the performer’s infec­tious inten­sity and ludi­crously foul mouth.

Gaps between songs are bridged with loosely-themed col­lec­tions of short, sharp one-liners which act as a pre­lude for Nichol’s next irrev­er­ent slice of poetry. If the quips seem hit and miss, the effect is surely delib­er­ate. Razor-sharp wit­ti­cisms induce gen­uine belly-laughs while some of the more low-brow mate­r­ial elic­its unsym­pa­thetic moans just as heart­felt. Nichol, how­ever, seems to thrive on the cheesi­ness of some of the more ropey gags. “A groan is as good as a laugh to me!” he glee­fully informs the audi­ence after an espe­cially hammy pun.

It’s clear that Nichol hasn’t quite ironed out all the creases in A Dead­pan Poet… but the show is brim­ming with comic poten­tial. The songs that make up the mid­dle sec­tion lack the inten­sity and imag­i­na­tion of the open­ing and clos­ing salvos and, despite the intended ironic uncouth­ness, too many of the one-liners are devoid of the sophis­ti­ca­tion an Edin­burgh audi­ence demands. Thank­fully, how­ever, the show’s end­ing and Nichol’s exhil­a­rat­ing stage pres­ence more than com­pen­sate for any short­com­ings in the rest of the material.

For a per­former who has been away from the musi­cal com­edy scene for so long — the Fringe is A Dead­pan Poet’s first out­ing in front of a live audi­ence — Phil Nichol acquits him­self admirably and, with a bit of spit and pol­ish as the fes­ti­val goes on, his lat­est show could eas­ily become one of the high­lights of the Fringe.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Jodi Mullen

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