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YOUR DAILY SHEET OF EDINBURGH FESTIVAL REVIEWS: #17 SUNDAY 21/MONDAY 22 AUG IN EDINBURGH ThreeWeeksGET THREEWEEKS COMEDY Kieran And The Joes: Teampowered DIRECT TO YOUR IN-BOX Thom Tuck Goes Straight To DVD Kieran And The Joes There are even more reviews in the Turlygod This entertaining and frivolous sketch show, masquerading as an informative ThreeWeeks eDaily email. ‘Straight-to-DVD’ Disney movies: it’s an and serious lifestyle seminar, promised to Sign up right now for free at unusual topic for a young, male performer, improve all audience members’ personalities but dealt with as Thom Tuck does – with www.ThreeWeeks.co.uk/eDaily beyond recognition in only 60 minutes. Our intelligence, irony and additional levels of charismatic leaders proudly guaranteed impassioned annoyance and tragicomedy that they would transform the meek and – they make for an inspired and hugely estranged into a polished team of confident entertaining show. Thom, from successful winners without obstacles or bickering – but comedy group ‘The Penny Dreadfuls,’ how wrong they were. The trio’s increasingly demonstrates his pedigree in character dysfunctional training exercises, featuring acting but also that he has the charm the least romantic marriage proposal and winning comic ability to go solo. imaginable and a birthday celebration that Referencing the many times he has been suddenly turned torturous, were consistently left heartbroken, Thom draws subtle pleasurable to watch and participate in. parallels between how Disney has let him Several provoked fits of laughter among down and the reality that life itself is not my new-found colleagues, but, aside from how Walt would have intended, allowing for a moment of brilliant confusion involving an endearing show that has the audience ‘Jurassic Park’ and the Second World War, laughing in agreement, despite perhaps not there wasn’t an outstanding set-piece that comprehending every Disney reference. merited a four-star review. Pleasance Dome, 3 - 28 Aug (not 21), 20.10pm (21.10pm), £8.00 - £10.00, fpp158. tw rating 4/5 [kc] Just The Tonic At The Store, 4 – 28 Aug (not 16), 1.20pm (2.20pm), £7.00 - £8.50, fpp105. tw rating: 3/5 [jf] James Dowdeswell: Doofus James Dowdeswell/The Stand Comedy Club Richard Dawkins Does Not Exist, Before James Dowdeswell takes to the And We Can Prove It stage, someone comes round with free nuts. Mark Quinn and Charlotte Young / PBH’s Free “James’ sister owns a nut company,” he Fringe explains, offering samples to the audience. “We would like to stress - this is not a It’s an odd way to commence, but once comedy show featuring maths. It is a maths Dowdeswell starts talking, it begins to show that occasionally features comedy”. make perfect sense: within ten minutes, It’s a fair warning: this is not a comedy in the affable comic manages to make the the conventional sense. In fact, despite its audience feel like old and trusted friends. witty, mass appeal title, this is a show that It’s a style of comedy absolutely perfect for could only possibly be convinced as comic if this small room: gently funny anecdotes are you have a good grasp of maths and maybe endearingly addressed directly to audience physics, but I wouldn’t know. There were members, giving the show an intimate ‘knock, knock’ jokes to prove mathematical feel, as though we’ve all just met down terms - or was it theorems? - and flip the pub. Chatty and cheerful, it’s great fun charts and equation heavy punch lines. If SNAP OF THE DAY: Twisted cabaret takes throughout; and unlike real pub sessions, cos+sin(π)=1 is your idea of a good premise nobody gets drunk and weepy. for a double entendre, then run for a ticket over the Voodoo Rooms at the Free Fringe, it’s The Stand Comedy Club III & IV, 5 – 28 Aug (not - the show was packed out. If not, give this 15), 4.45pm (5.45pm), £5.00 - £8.00, fpp94. tw rating 4/5 [eb] a miss. ‘Kabarett: Alternative Variety’. Photo: Richard Dyson The Canons’ Gait, 6 – 28 Aug (not 16, 23), 3.40pm (4.40pm), free, fpp140. tw rating 2/5 [jl] Pockets of Suspense Relax, Eat And Breathe / Laughing Horse Free Frisky And Mannish: Pop Centre Phill Jupitus Quartet - ‘Made Up’ The Midnight Hour Festival Plus Gilded Balloon PBH’s Free Fringe ‘Pockets of Suspense’ is a fitting title for this Phil McIntyre Entertainments By Arrangement With Phill Jupitus leads this joyfully funny and Housing London’s Soho Comedy Club, the United Agents show, as the denouement of each sketch antagonistic set of improvised comedy, warm mahogany design of the Canon’s routinely holds an amusing, yet often morbid, Rihanna’s chains and whips aren’t nearly as where the performers compete and Gait pub provides an ideal venue for some surprise. The two performers, who proved exciting as this year’s F&M show. Poking fun challenge each other to even greater chilled out, late night comedy. Unfolding very amiable indeed, delightfully enacted at pop seems to be a recurring theme of heights, egged on by an audience that is in the throes of a convivial underground eighteen short sketches, covering topics this year’s fringe, with shows like ‘Dead Cat soon engrossed in their crazy onstage bunker, the gig offers fresh guests every like family oddities, an overly inept detective, Bounce’ and ‘HitComet’. More than making games. The most surreal of their wonderfully show, compered by the wonderfully inured or strange encounters between friends. pop culture references, this double-act get madcap collection of sketches is when circuit veteran Kate Smurthwaite. Highlights The performance space was small, and to the heart of the problems of today’s Top each one takes the voice of another, which included some light news probing from the props non-existent, but the actors still 40, highlighting trends of artists who sell essentially just results in Phill Jupitus being David Mulholland, which fed sharply into managed to pull off an entirely convincing themselves as original, but who are actually forced to dance “the dance of love” every Kiwi Benjamin Crellin’s set on British show. It must be admitted, however, that just recycling chord progressions. They time his character is voiced. Despite taking a idiosyncrasies and New Zealand lifestyle. the macabre punchlines and, at times, reach out to a range of musical generations, while to get going, this is brilliant improvised Though a little slow at times, and perhaps consciously revolting references, were not with numbers like Rihanna’s ‘Rude Boy’ in comedy that soon has the audience missing the intimacy which a venue such as to everyone’s liking. Nevertheless, ‘Pockets the style of the Bee Gees, and an anthology completely enthralled, as a long sketch The Stand affords, the comics flirted with of Suspense’ proved entertaining for most of Madonna. The audience participation about an Icelandic poet hit the comedic the audience’s boundaries before rounding of those who stayed for the full forty-five could afford to be more original, but talent is heights that only the best can reach. the night off with style, whoops and just minutes. Time well spent indeed. in the air and I like the sound of it. Gilded Balloon Teviot, 5 - 28 Aug (not 9, 16, 23, 26), Laughing @ Espionage, 8 – 27 Aug, 1.35pm enough cheers – not to forget the beers! Udderbelly’s Pasture, 3 - 28 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), 9.30 3.30pm (4.30pm), £11.00 - £14.00, fpp133. (2.20pm), free, fpp135. tw rating 4/5 [ma] The Canons’ Gait, 5 – 29 Aug (not 6, 7, 14, 21, 28), pm (10.30pm), £10.50 - £14.00, fpp80. tw rating tw rating 4/5 [sj] 11.59pm (1.00am), free, fpp119. tw 3/5 [ajl] 4/5 [cld] MORE REVIEWS PLUS NEWS, INTERVIEWS AND EXCLUSIVE COLUMNS: WWW.THREEWEEKS.CO.UK Bristol Revunions: National legends have jumped on the band wagon Joe Bor: In Search Of The find ‘Beltup’s Outland’. If you enjoyed that audience laugh several times. It’s this touch Friends with hits like ‘Tropic Thunder’, in whose Six Pack sentence, you’ll probably enjoy the show. that makes ‘Generation 9/11’ a truly fresh footsteps ‘Armageddapocalypse’ so closely ‘Outland’ is about the life and works of and exciting experience. Unmissable. Bristol Revunions Joe Bor treads, and which, sadly, fails to generate fantasy writer, Lewis Carroll. Carroll’s theSpaces @ Surgeons Hall, 5 – 27 Aug (not 7, 14, This limp and uninspiring sketch show by much laughter. The acting can’t be faulted, Perhaps the fact that he hails from my characters, from Alice to the lesser known 21), times vary, £6.00 - £7.00, fpp265 tw rating 5/5 five undergraduates from the University as the young cast simmer with energy home turf of Crouch End gave me a Sylvie and Bruno, sporadically appear [eb] of Bristol contained fewer than Severn and possess brilliant comic timing, and predisposition for liking Joe Bor. He does alongside Carroll in this interactive show. amusing jokes. Unfortunately, despite as a result, most of the audience seem to indeed come across as a jolly nice guy… in The creative set creates an imprisoned Sleeping Beauty generally respectable performances and enjoy the show. However, much like a fuzzy search of a six-pack. With the aid of some feeling, intensifying the writing’s macabre Another Soup Productions some convincing impressions, the group video clips and a PowerPoint presentation photocopied picture, this has already been playfulness. However, the characters tend I have never seen an adaptation of ‘Sleeping were hindered by eccentric material he talks us through the past year of his done, and the script is stale.