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

Chris Cox wins FestBuzz’s Twitter of the Year award at Edinburgh Fringe 2009

Posted by elise on August 27, 2009

Chris Cox wins FestBuzz’s Twit­ter of the Year award at Edin­burgh Fringe 2009

Fes­t­Buzz have awarded Chris Cox, the com­edy men­tal­ist magi­cian, the first ever com­edy Twit­ter of the Year Award at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe.

Cox has been given this prize for his cre­ative and pro­lific use of Twit­ter which has helped gar­ner him almost 3,000 fol­low­ers on the site, and ensured his pop­u­lar­ity at this year’s Fringe fes­ti­val with his show Mind Over Pat­ter. He has tweeted around 300 times this August, con­vers­ing with fans and fel­low come­di­ans about com­edy, the inter­net and his show. Chris’ online name is @bigcox, and his mind-reading and magic show com­bines other new social media such as Face­book to cre­ate some excel­lent tricks for his audience.

Fes­t­Buzz is a new way to find cool stuff at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­vals. It’s a project from Affect Labs, a data pro­cess­ing com­pany based in Edin­burgh, and is sup­ported by Chan­nel 4’s 4iP fund. Fes­t­Buzz aggre­gates “tweets” about shows and then uses sen­ti­ment detec­tion to cre­ate a star rat­ing for the act: reviews are crowd-sourced directly from the peo­ple who are see­ing the shows, rather than critics.

Twit­ter has become an inter­net sen­sa­tion in the last 8 months: func­tion­ing a lit­tle like Face­book sta­tus updates, you sim­ply tell the site what you’re doing (in 140 char­ac­ters or less) and then read what other peo­ple are doing from their “tweets”. The attrac­tion of Twit­ter is fol­low­ing other inter­est­ing or famous people’s tweets about their lives, cre­at­ing a stream of con­scious­ness type feed which illus­trates the chang­ing mood of the moment.

The prize will be pre­sented to Chris Cox at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe show start­ing at 1pm on Thurs­day 27th August. Stut­ter has been run­ning the revue since 1992 and will be pre­sent­ing his own Spirit of the Fringe awards on Sun­day 30th August.

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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: Tommy and the Weeks — Wonderbang

Posted by elise on August 19, 2009

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Who: Tommy and the Weeks
Where: Pleas­ance Beside
When: 5.15pm until 31 August 2009
How Much: £7-£8.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Tom Bell and Ed Weeks are com­plete oppo­sites, but won­der­ful, beau­ti­ful things can hap­pen when oppo­sites attract.”

As songstress Paula Abdul once so rightly pointed out, “It ain’t fic­tion, just a nat­ural fact. We come together, cause oppo­sites attract”. This is cer­tainly true of sketch duo Tommy and the Weeks, regard­less of the fact that nei­ther of them is an ani­mated cat.

Mak­ing up in gags what they lack in num­bers, Tom Bell and Ed Weeks kick off pro­ceed­ings with a good old sing-song of some eight­ies clas­sics, with the audi­ence heartily join­ing in. This is a slick show and the boys slide in and out of sketches so nat­u­rally it’s some­times sur­pris­ing to realise you’re in a new sketch.

There are some really orig­i­nal ideas in here, be it a club­bing shep­herd or a math­e­mat­i­cal faun. There’s a gen­uine sense of fun about the show, clearly demon­strated by the fact that the pair are enjoy­ing them­selves so much on stage. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the show and find your­self truly touched by the moments of pathos. Both are excel­lent actors and pull off the act of talk­ing over each other for comic effect bet­ter than it’s been done for years.

It’s hard to talk about the show with­out spoil­ing all the gags, but it’s a quotable and laugh-out-loud adven­ture. Ed Weeks exudes con­fi­dence, and Tom Bells oozes indie charm. Watch­ing their love/hate rela­tion­ship unfurl is a truly enjoy­able experience.Whatever these boys do next, it’s great to see some­one tak­ing com­edy so seriously.

High­lights include Ed Weeks solo song, Tom Bell’s worst (or best) ever date, and some really great paint­ing. See this show: you’ll be moved, amused and leave with a smile on your face.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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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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