AT the fringe, comedy shows are often quite hit or miss.
And with rising ticket prices, you often want to avoid it altogether just in case you go for one that leaves you disappointed.
Take Dogberry and Verges Are Scared.
This send-up of Much Ado About Nothing rests on the laurels of being equivalent to Hamlet parody Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, but unfortunately suffers from a few ailments.
The first being, nobody remembers the plot to Much Ado About Nothing. The second being, it just wasn’t very funny.
Relying on what I like to refer to as “loud equals funny”, the jokes are dated and repetitive, referencing Tumblr posts from years ago, and delivered with such ham-fisted acting that you’d think this was their first time on the stage.
Though some jokes did land (including vague nods to other Shakespeare plays – though unfortunately missing out on a very obvious Hamlet reference), the majority of the play relied on the idea that foolishness and mispronouncing words are funny within themselves and failed to make any actual good jokes.
But that doesn’t mean you should write off all American comedians. For a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience, look no further than Fempaths: Transistor Radio Hour, where trans comedian Mari Moriarty delivers a show equal parts brutal and hilarious with the help of her wind instrumentalist and cello player.
Musical comedy does bring to mind Bo Burnham, but though clearly inspired, Moriarty’s piece is very clearly her own. Touching upon everything from trans trauma to crude humour and very personal stories, whether you’re laughing or crying, Moriarty certainly succeeds in making you feel something. Even if that feeling is wondering whether you’re going to be utterly devastated or crying laughing whenever she reaches for her keyboard.
And she doesn’t steer away from the very real threat trans people are facing in this society, using an act and a flamboyant character (demonstrated as she quite literally puts on and takes off her masks) to tell very honest stories and get vulnerable in a way she wouldn’t usually be able to, reciting the works of Marsha P Johnson and various evil political figures and viciously critiquing those complacent in the oppression of one of the most vulnerable groups in society.
Never one to end on a downer, she leaves us with the very real fact that trans people are and always will be here. And despite how much it feels like it at the moment, things can and will always get better.
And it’s not just the paid shows that can have you laughing. Tucked away in Binkies Lounge was a small-stage show of PowerPoint presentations and totally unique jokes. The absurdist fever-dream-esque comedy show Pythonesque Comedy By A Dry Surreal Geordie Bloke Who Has ADHD attracted a small audience of around eight people and a couple of walkouts, but what you walked in for was exactly what you got. Endearingly clumsy and low-quality, the lack of finesse added to the surrealist comedy as we saw everything from Neil DeGrasse Tyson sucking Brian Cox into the Large Hadron Collider to become part sheep to Geordie Doctor Who and alpacas in space.
Unlike the vulnerability of Moriarty’s performance, Sean Craig-Turner’s musical segments are silly parodies that pass the verge of the so-bad-it’s-good genre in the way only a neurodivergent brain could perfect. But like Moriarty, you are never quite sure whether you’re going to get poorly animated dogs singing Dolly Parton or a pre-recorded prank where he shoves Dijon mustard into his sleeping friend’s mouth.
In all, if you want the experience you get when you wake up and try to remember the dream you just had, then this is the show for you.
But by far the best act of the fringe run that was well worth my money was Alice Fraser: Oh Man!. Wit so rapid-fire that you were still processing the first joke by the time she’s onto the third and biting political commentary on AI and the manosphere, you often forget you’re watching a show written and performed by just one woman.
The pull of the show is the idea that she’s teaching a Roomba (creatively named Elon Dust) how to be a man, which leads to fiery takedowns of toxic masculinity, relentless advertising and subscription models, and even a brief nod towards Greek philosophy.
As the Roomba gets programmed, so are we taken through ideas of what it is to be human, interspersed with audience participation and ads (since we haven’t bought the premium version of the show, which we can for £100, right here, right now), where Fraser reads excerpts from “the ad section of her book” – an excuse to critique gambling and make ridiculous puns, a perfect way of adding a lick of absurdism to such a grounded show.
Though Moriarty had me going through a string of emotions and Craig-Turner had me crying with laughter, I have to hand it to Fraser’s as the best gig of the night. Intelligent and polished, in my book, you can’t beat political comedy.
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