FestBuzz

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