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Divine comedy
Lloyd Evans finds some stars of the future at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
T
he locals probably can’t bear the
Edinburgh festival. Their solid, hand-
some streets are suddenly packed
with needy thesps waving and flapping at
them from every kerbside. ‘New interactive
comedy quiz, starts in five minutes.’ ‘Award-
winning monologue about growing up Chi-
nese in Droitwich.’ ‘Stalin the Opera per-
formed by tone-deaf choir.’ There’s a wag-
gish actor who stands on George IV Bridge
challenging passers-by not to take a leaflet.
‘When I hand out my next flyer I’m going to
jump off the parapet.’ He’s there every day.
One of the first shows I sampled was Tita-
nia McGrath Mxnifesto (Pleasance Court-
yard, until 25 August). Titania McGrath, the
woke guru, demolishes the alt-left ortho-
doxy in 45 minutes of venomous satire. ‘I’m
a simple Kensington girl,’ she announces
dictatorially, ‘with a moderate trust fund
and a thirst for justice.’ She plans to set up a
new progressive party, Shame UK, based on
the precept that ‘whiteness is rape’. Titania
is an intriguingly detailed character study.
She’s bigoted and arrogant but also snob-
bish, callow and sadistic. ‘I need a new lab-
radoodle, I had to shoot the last one because
it stank.’ She likens herself to a ‘modern-day
Rosa Parks, except that I wouldn’t be seen
dead on public transport, obvs’. A readiness
for violence flashes through her rhetoric.
‘I’m going to blow your skulls out with my
wisdom.’ She’s not remotely interested in
morality or politics, only in her belief that
she’s right about everything.
Though expensively educated, she’s
shockingly ill informed. ‘Jews are great,’ she
says, explaining her opposition to anti-Sem-
itism. ‘They’re really smart. And cunning.
I even read that Anne Frank novel. But it’s
got a shit ending. It just sort of stops.’ Some
of her lines are straightforward stand-up. ‘If
we could eliminate heterosexuality, future
generations would thank us.’ Others sound
like real exchanges overheard in Sloane
Square. ‘Prince Archie’s such a disappoint-
ment — we were promised a mixed-race one
but I go darker than that after a week in Val
d’Isère.’
Alice Marshall (Titania) is a fabulous
beauty with an amazing knack for physical
clowning. Her rap parodies and ‘intersec-
tional dances’ would make great standalone
sketches on TV. She rants at her mum for
giving birth to her. ‘You spat me out of youryawning muff/ You had no right to murder
me with life/ You owe me an iPhone 10.’
Erich McElroy, the ‘Radical Cen-
trist’ (Laughing Horse @ Bar 50, until 25
August), is an American stand-up with
British citizenship whose wife, a childmin-
der, is required by EYR (Early Years Reg-
ister) to teach ‘British values’ to nippers
under five. The ‘values’ these tots must
absorb include ‘respect’ and ‘tolerance
of others’. That’s the funniest moment in
a set composed of urbane bourgeois obser-
vations. Comedy needs more thorns and
fewer petals. Konstantin Kisin (Gilded Bal-
loon Teviot, until 26 August), a British Jew
of Russian extraction, delivers a slick show
full of great one-liners. ‘I love this country.
I say so publicly. That’s how you know I’m
not really British.’ He doubts whether Putin
was behind Brexit but he sees the Krem-
lin’s growing influence over our parliament.
‘A prime minister with a Russian name and
an opposition leader with Russian policies.’His most chilling revelation is that in Rus-
sia last year there were 400 arrests for vio-
lations of social media rules. In this country,
he claims, the figure is 3,200. He hopes that
we won’t end up like Winston Smith at the
close of Nineteen Eighty-Four parroting the
mantra that ‘two plus two equals five’. That
could only happen, he says, ‘if Diane Abbott
becomes education secretary’.
I watched Tom Little (Opium, 71 Cow-
gate, until 24 August), a nervous youngster
from Cumberland, who delivered a raw and
chaotic 50-minute set. He lost his way, for-
got large chunks of his script and had to
backtrack several times. But he’s the real
deal. An instinctive comedian with oodles
of charm and a quirky, frenetic intensity.
He deconstructs the stand-up’s role in soci-
ety and discusses the classic response when
a comedian reveals to a stranger what he
does for a living. Either the comic will be
asked to ‘tell a joke’. Or the stranger will
offer the comedian a gag to include in his
set. ‘Neither of those things ever happen to
me. When I tell people I’m a comedian, they
just look worried.’ Some in the crowd, main-
ly men, seemed a little bored by his showbut the women were rocking with mirth.
There are hints of Lee Evans and Simon
Pegg about him, and even a dash of Michael
Crawford’s exquisite creation, Frank Spen-
cer. If he cuts his energy levels by 10 per cent
he could end up in movies.
Scots comedian Mark Nelson reveals
his sympathies in his show’s title, Brexit
Wounds (Gilded Balloon Teviot, until 25
August). His certitude is unshakeable. ‘Did
you vote Remain or were you wrong?’
There were plenty of Scots in the crowd
who cheered noisily for Brexit. And though
Nelson believes in free movement and the
loosening of national borders, his jokes are
explicitly tribalist. ‘Dunfermline is a great
city of culture. And by that I mean most of
the woman have yeast infections.’ He’s bet-
ter when mocking the Scots for their laissez-
faire political culture. ‘The nearest we came
to a riot was when Irn-Bru reduced the sug-
ar-levels.’ He got a shock when he tried to
scold Scottish Brexiteers for taking too large
a gamble with Britain’s economy. ‘Nae gam-
ble!’ shouted a voice at the back. His show
was badly affected by a comic in the adjoin-
ing room hollering non-stop into the micro-
phone. Nelson handled it brilliantly but it’s
tough for a stand-up to deal with a heckler
who is a) outside the venue and b) amplified.
Myra (Imagination Workshop, until 24
August) is a harrowing monologue about
the Moors murderers. In this show Myra
lays most of the blame on her boyfriend Ian
Brady, and she claims to have been his first
victim. She was bewitched by his charisma
and intelligence even though he regularly
threatened to kill her. ‘You’re mine now,’ he
announced after their first sexual encoun-
ter. He enjoyed pointing loaded weapons
at her and he liked to pinch her windpipe
while raping her. Once, during a bout of
non-consensual anal sex, he tore a chunk
out of her face with his teeth. Later he told
her to explain the gash as a wound sustained
by a flying bottle during a bar brawl. It’s
a miracle she survived his assaults and yet
she was instrumental in luring their victims
to their deaths. This is a hard show to enjoy.
The writer/performer Lauren Varnfield, has
an inscrutable, doll-like beauty. Her face is
full of unsettling influences, scorn, impa-
tience, cruelty and deceit. Film directors
would love that spectrum of emotions.
Nazis Need Jews (Banshee Labyrinth,There are hints of Lee Evans and
Simon Pegg about Tom Little and
even a dash of Frank Spencer