Show 54: Julio Torres: My Favourite Shapes

Having been recommended by Stu Goldsmith I was intrigued to see what this American act had that so enthralled Goldsmith.

Julio Torres genuinely takes the audience through all his favourite shapes. It’s a low-key, mid-tech affair, with a table, some everyday objects demonstrating his favourite shapes, a large magnifying glass for those close to the stage to see and a camera and projector hooked to his iPhone for the rest of the audience.

It’s a pretty audacious act, and he’s cultivated a calm, quiet confidence of his voice which is rare in young comic acts. The various shapes are all essentially prompts for him to allow us into his world of peculiar, dry observations of class, politics and his life in general.

I can see why Goldsmith was taken in – Julio Torres is bold, brave and doesn’t compromise. It’s an interesting concept for a show, and it’s certainly charming and has its moments but expect a gentle-paced quirky show rather than a laugh-a-minute affair.

Score: 6/10

Venue: Underbelly, Cowgate

Show 53: Trygve vs Baby

It’s an interesting concept – Trygve Wakenshaw, as a future birthday present to his son, will film him performing with his baby son in various skits. They say in show business never do anything with animals or children. Perhaps there’s something in that?

It’s a fairly cutesy show, with Wakenshaw’s child dressed in various outfits and the two of them acting/playing together in various scenes. Not a terrible idea, quite novel and overall interesting but it didn’t quite capture my imagination. Maybe those with stronger paternal instincts would have got more out of it than me?

Score: 5/10

Venue: Assembly at The Roxy

Show 52: Dara o’ Briain: Work in Progress

Dara o’ Briain announced on twitter he was doing some last-minute work-in-progress shows in Edinburgh – I nabbed myself a ticket on the same day and I think they had sold out within two.

It’s not often one gets to see a top class comedian for only £12 or so. Cramped into one of the medium sized Pleasance Courtyard rooms, Dara comes on, casually dressed with loose comic material to work with, but the thing with Dara is that he’s so damn good at audience riffing, and at going with the flow, his mind works at 100 miles an hour, and he comes up with the jokes at lightening pace when he needs to, the pre-worked material is solid gold and the half-hashed material is a gold vein waiting to be mined.

He had a particularly funny joke about the BFG (I shan’t spoil the surprise).

He's touring his show Voice of Reason throughout 2018.

Score: Officially no score

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard

Show 51: The Bear Pack

Having Steen Raskopoulos a couple of times already, I had wanted to check out his improve duo act ‘The Bear Pack’ for a couple of years but the opportunity never arose until 2017.

In of the larger Underbelly venues, Steen Raskopoulos and Carlo Ritchie improvise an entire show based on a single word. I can’t remember what was suggested nearly a year ago, but I do recall there something about a forest and saving a tree.

Regardless, I do remember that these were two extremely capable, talented improvisers who worked extraordinarily well together. It’s a rare thing to find two improvisers in perfect synch with each other, but it was clearly evident in The Bear Pack.

I’ll be making a repeat visit to these talented two in 2018.

Score: 8/10

Venue: Underbelly, Cowgate

Show 50: Jon Pointing: Act Natural

This was a character comedy act that got a 4/5 review in the Guardian and as such I was interested to see what it offered.

Alas, I don’t think I was quite the right audience for it, or maybe I should have gone to Drama School to have fully appreciated the up-itself artsy pretentiousness of the show.

It’s a convincing act of a self-interested, arrogant, hippy actor giving an acting masterclass which takes itself far too seriously and totally useless, but to be honest I was failing to really engage or even laugh in the show.

It was an excellent study of bullshitting and vague notions of ‘art’ and ‘truth’ but perhaps I’m someone who just loves slapstick and puns too much.

Score: 2/10

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard

Show 49: Kieran Hodgson: Work in Progress

I think I found out about this work in progress show on twitter or Kieran Hodgson’s Facebook page. Having watched ‘Lance’ in 2016 in London and Maestro in 2017, again in London and thoroughly enjoyed both, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to see what Hodgson was working on next.

It was an incredibly ambitious exploration of 1970s politics as a means of explaining why the UK ultimately voted for Brexit in 2016. It opens with Hodgson miming trundling onto stage in a car (from memory I think he was playing his parent pre-birth of Hodgson) and chatting with their friendly neighbour about European politics. Cut then to present day and Hodgson is discussing with his German friend about why the UK voted for Brexit.

What proceeds is a giddy, sometimes almost delirious retelling of 70s UK politics filled with incredible satirical caricatures, the most memorable and genius ones being Charles De Gaulle reworked as a Ru Paul drag act, and Enoch Powell as a cat. There were certainly prolonged passages detailing politicians stances which were more academic and lacking in jokes and undoubtedly it was a show that needed heavy re-working and direction but the bare bones of the concept and the strength of his ideas were more than promising.

Kieran Hodgson finally brings his finished show to Edinburgh this year (promised to be a trilogy last year though we’ll see how that pans out – given his 2018 show is titled “ ’75 ” I suspect he’ll be focussing on different years in subsequent shows).

I cannot wait to see how these ideas have developed in the intervening 11 months.

Score: officially no score but 9/10

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard

Show 48: Mae Martins: Dope

Mae Martin’s a veteran of comedy, despite being only 30 at the time – she had started stand-up at 15. She’s had plenty of time to hone her voice and really get to grips with her life and her material, which made for a brilliant, brutally honest but thoughtfully and deceptively light show about her serious drug addiction.

Martins explains how she’s always had an obsessive personality, from an infatuation with Bette Midler, to almost staling the local stand-up comedy participants to, finally, consuming and dealing drugs.

This is a very candid show, akin to ‘The Darkness of Robins’ dealt with in a similarly emotionally intelligent, deft but assured manner that encourages empathy but not pity from the audience. She brings in basic neuroscience of addiction to rationalise human behaviours of addiction and lays bare the wreckage she left when her adolescence all went a bit off the rails. It’s a really important show about the risks of seeking short-lived short-term pleasures, human faults and how easily it can all collapse and how hard it can be to come back from the brink of self-destruction, all with generous helpings of jokes and witty self-deprecation along the way.

Score: 9/10

Venue: The City Café