Edinburgh Fringe Diary 2024 – Part Five

Picking out the best of the Fringe just for you

Aug 19, 2024

The Edinburgh Fringe always throws up some wonderful curveball comedy shows that seem to come out of nowhere and don’t quite fall under the stand-up umbrella but are still brilliantly funny. I’ve written about Demi Adejuyigbe here. Another show that defies categorisation in Jin Hao Li’s Swimming In A Submarine (Pleasance, four stars).

Hao Li (below, picture by Rebecca Need-Menear) is largely soft spoken, born in China, raised in Singapore and one of the most enigmatic entertainers I’ve come across in years. His show has very few conventional jokes as such, it is more a succession of off-kilter anecdotes and quirky stories about his dreams delivered in a deadpan and increasingly surreal style. There has been a lot of chat about crowdwork at this year’s Fringe but nobody does crowdwork quite like Li, who prepares for any interaction with an impeccably polite “May I approach?”

His stories take in subjects as diverse as relationships and the Yakuza – the Japanese mafia – who chop off a little finger for misdemeanours. He is young but has plenty of hinterland to draw on, having been in the Singapore army before studying at St Andrews University (assuming those bits are true). Occasionally a relatable observation will pop up, such as asking why men think it is sexy to pose with fish on dating apps, but the fun here is usually when he goes off piste. Warning - he might be the most soft spoken act on this year’s Fringe, but not always…

Do comedians pay any attention to their reviews? When Bella Hull (Pleasance, four stars) appeared at the Fringe in 2022 one scathing write-up speculated that she was such a Gen Z walking cliche maybe she was a character comedian trying to satirise the Gen Z narcissistic, entitled template. This time round Hull seems to have softened those edges and comes across as much more genuine. Still definitely Gen Z but it doesn’t grate anywhere near as much as it might have.

Piggie is a more straightforward autobiographical set drawing together strands about her childhood with reflections on her current life. Food – apple crumble, fruit cake, the globs that Huel drinks form in her throat – is a motif. She talks about devouring the chocolate in the advent calendar as a child without a pause and bonding with an elderly Jehovah’s Witness neighbour and the local handyman over snacks. Piggie is not without its niggles, but it shows a gifted comedian moving up a gear. While you should definitely see this I’m excited to see what Hull does next.

I was recently raving about Mat Ewins and saying that there is nobody quite like him on the Fringe. Well, there is now. Stevie Martin (Monkey Barrel, four stars) is performing in the same room, also uses two screens on either side of the stage and also knits together hi tech humour with insanely inventive yet silly jokes, in her case about class, horse-shaped lamps and the limits of Shakespeare’s creativity.

In clout Martin, formerly of sketch group Massive Dad which also included award-winner Liz Kingsman, both sends up and celebrates her success as an online comedian. She jokes about how the most random clips go viral, such as pulling things out of your body, and then pushes the idea to the limit. There are proper stand-up jokes too and some wonderful running gags that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling. The pace is a little less gloriously frenetic than Ewins but the hit rate is just as high.

This is also, incidentally, a really useful show if you want to go viral, with some great tips on how to game the algorithms. Unless, of course, Martin’s tips are all jokes too.

I came out of Martin’s show just in time to catch Sara Barron at another Monkey Barrel venue over the road. It was a tight turnaround but I’m glad I made it. Barron is on great form this year. There have been a few shows this year touching on dads and male role models – Sophie Duker, Ania Magliano spring to mind – but in Anything For You (four stars) Barron homes in on her mother.

I’ve always thought that Barron is a strong flavour. There’s possibly some Joan Rivers in there, but this set clearly reveals where she gets most of her forceful personality from. Without going into too much detail let’s just say that Barron Senior is what you might call a larger-than-life character. A vivid picture is painted of family life and this dominant figure and how she continues to cast a shadow over her daughter’s life even though Sara has moved to a different country and become a mother herself.

The powerhouse performance is a physical as it is verbal, with Barron constantly gesticulating and twisting as she tells her stories. And in fact there’s a twist in the tale towards the end which argues that for all her faults Barron’s mum wasn’t so bad after all. An essential show for anyone whose feelings for their mums are on the conflicted side. In fact an essential show for anyone.

Sometimes you see a show at the Edinburgh Fringe and it feels as if they have read your mind and are throwing your own thoughts and ideas back at you, only more focussed and funnier. That’s what Micky Overman (Monkey Barrel, four stars) did to me. I might be older and a different gender but all sorts of things she said rang true, from the idea that your identity changes the longer your relationship continues, particularly if you are a woman and you don’t marry, and also that one way of reinventing yourself when things don’t work out is to head to a new country.

The Dutch comic is on the form of her life in Hold On. This is modern, sharp, conventional stand-up, a series of hilarious stories framed around an account of her sister’s marriage. There’s a subtext about anxiety and mental health but it doesn’t dominate. The emphasis is very much on relatable laughs. In fact there was one bizarre relatable thing that really struck an unexpected chord. At one point Overman mentioned an unlikely famous person who she resembles. Having done a Zoom quiz during lockdown which included a picture round identifying young heavy metal bands, I can confirm that she definitely does look like the person she refers to. If the comedy doesn’t work out she could always have a side hustle as a lookalike. Luckily I think the comedy will work out.

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