Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Chris Grace / Ania Magliano / Elvis McGonagall

Chris Grace, Assembly George Square ★★★★ 

How do you produce laughs out of grief and loss? Well Chris Grace does, and then some, in Sardines (A Comedy About Death). The American actor, well known to Fringe regulars as a member of improv group Baby Wants Candy, structures the show almost as a thought experiment; can you enjoy something when you know how it's going to end? And does art actually help us deal with a complex issue such as bereavement?

In a clever conceit, he mimes drawing an oblong shape that he says is a screen, and then mimes a shape that he says is a projector – “They cost too much to rent for the show” – and on to that screen he “projects” photographs that he dates and describes to tell his tale.

Grace tells us that five people he identifies in the first photograph – parents, siblings and long-term partner – have all died, three of them at a cruelly young age. The first to go, his sister at the age of 49, died before his parents, thereby “breaking a contract with the universe”.

One by one we hear about them and how they shaped his life as the youngest child of four in a Chinese American family, with a father who never accepted that he was gay.

The stories are sometimes profound, sometimes playful as Grace reflects on how the deaths impacted him. One particularly affecting section is when he talks about how the memories people have of us die with them; it's an astute observation, and one deliciously undercut with a reference to a Rihanna song.

Grace is a wonderful storyteller, softly spoken and ironic, but the show is never woeful. It is, however, frequently funny.

• Until 26 August

Ania Magliano, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★

Relationships – current or past – are rich material for many comics, and so it proves with Ania Magliano's latest show Forgive Me, Father. Her dad appears in it, but her partner Will (a fellow comic) and gynaecologists feature more prominently.

That's because her contraceptive coil takes the main role as she weaves a tale ostensibly about a problem she was having with it but which, we come to see, is really about her commitment issues. Magliano is someone who deflects very well – so blaming her coil for the nagging feeling inside when  Will, the first boyfriend she has shared a home with, moved in was not too big a jump for her.

In a well structured show Magliano reveals small details that gradually zoom out to give us the bigger picture, and she starts by confessing her social media habit. Nothing wrong there, you may think, but it focuses on looking at what her boyfriend's ex is getting up to these days and takes up a lot of her time. She also talks about her parents' divorce, her picky eating habits (and being taken for a vegan) and a vibrator that's too energetic for her.

In a journey from self-absorption to self-awareness the emphasis is on the storytelling rather than big laughs, but it's an engaging hour.

• Until 25 August

Elvis McGonagall, Gilded Balloon Patter House ★★★★ 

If you like poetry, politics and comedy, Elvis McGonagall is your man. In Gin & Catatonic? he pronounces on the state of UK and US politics, Brexit and the lasting effects of Covid. Oh, and his rescue cats.

McGonagall (the alter ego of Richard Smith) starts by drily reflecting on how preparations for his show were somewhat altered by Rishi Sunak's decision to go for a July election. He doesn't hold back on telling us how he felt about seeing the back of the Tory government  but Tories are not the only objects of his ire. He mentions Sir Nick Clegg – “Three words that should end the honours system.”

The political poems – and the very witty introductions to them – are interwoven with tales about his life, as McGonagall talks about his past acting career. He's done loads of minor roles and “gurning in Continental adverts”, he tells us, but getting a “doof doof” moment on EastEnders was the highlight.

The poems are wonderfully constructed – he rhymes “nouveau riche” with “quiche” in one about the recent King's Speech – while “Sorry 'Bout That” is a masterful takedown of Boris Johnson, with McGonagall's fury increasing stanza by stanza.

Along the way, he mentions Silicon Valley bros, Liz Truss's blink-and-you-miss-it premiership and his pandemic lockdown experience, and after the sharp satire he ends on a nicely soppy note with a poem about his wife.

• Until 25 August
• More comedy reviews on theartsdesk