Brett Mills is a virtual pick ‘n’ Mix of allusions and metaphors which, like the ones we used to get at Woolworth’s, could be delightful. But inevitably, like Woolworths, it ends up rather bankrupt. Russell Hicks “flips between insult and concern”…which “never hits the heights”, “because he doesn’t give punters enough rope to hang themselves”, […]
Craig Naples has this infuriating habit of trying to give a tantalising flavour of something but just being bloody annoying. When he tells us that Scott Gibson: Life After Death comes “…with one moment in particular (involving a matron and a pillow) … is swift yet chillingly clinical and grotesque”, he applies FOUR adjectives to […]
The problem with Will Young – and it’s not a terminal problem – is his apparent need to assault everything he looks at. He’ll attempt to establish an ideological standpoint, frame a performer’s whole existence or tie the whole show up into an epithet. Until he’s got his performer helpless and hogtied, Young does not […]
Stu Black is quite refreshing. Perhaps I feel like that because we’ve all had a week in the FringePig office looking at reviewers eager to winkle out misogynists and those guilty of cultural essentialism or national exceptionalism or gender reductivism. Reviewers who have taken on the job of culture police. And then suddenly we have […]
With so many Fest reviewers wanting to hunt down Fringe comedians, slaughter them in cold blood and wear their shrunken heads and genitals as voodoo fetishes, it’s perhaps refreshing to find one who just wants to inspect their private parts in a scientific way, pat their heads and release them back into the wild. By […]
Molly Stewart has only reviewed two Fringe shows so far, and one of them during its preview, so apologies if we’re going off half-cock. But we are were very excited to have a Gigglebeater to reviewer-review; they don’t come around very often. Stewart is a generous reviewer, always ready to temper a comment that may […]
We all like a superfluity of grandiose verbiage. There’s no need to say “superfluity of grandiose verbiage” when I could just say “too many big words”, but I did it and I’ll do it again. So when I read that Lou Sanders’ Excuse Me, You’re Sitting On My Penis Again is “substantively light on penises, […]
For any comedian older than about 35, bringing your comedy to the Fringe has a special pitfall: the sizable chance that, if you speak on any subject other than snogging, worrying about your genitals and handing in a dissertation, the 17-year-old student reviewer will brand your material “not always relatable”. So it’s nice that Will […]
You know how preachers – of any religion – will tell you that God knows you far better than you can know yourself? Well God knows nothing next to John Stansfield. John Stansfield looks down from on high upon the piddling little comedian and knows exactly what they think they are, what they think they’re […]