Ari Shaffir ★★★★★
Alex Edelman ★★★★★
When Alex Edelman first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014 he walked off with the Edinburgh Comedy Award for best newcomer. Now in his third stand-up show, Just For Us, he delivers a beautifully constructed hour of narrative comedy.
Catherine Bohart ★★★★
Catherine Bohart tells us at the top of the show that she is the bisexual daughter of an Irish Catholic deacon, which is, when you consider it, a niche description. Oh, and she has OCD. That’s quite an introduction, and she more than lives up to it in this debut show, Immaculate.
When Flight of the Conchords first played at the Edinburgh Fringe they were a sleeper hit, championed by other comics and loved by critics. In 2003 they were nominated for best show in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, a Radio Two series followed, then two series of an HBO mockumentary in which they played fictionalised versions of themselves as innocents abroad trying to make it in New York, with fellow Kiwi Rhys Darby as their manager (pictured below).
Bridget Christie tells us at the top of the show that she is a heterosexual, able-bodied, privileged white female – so why is she feeling so discontented? As she explains with great verbal dexterity in What Now?, it is living in a post-EU referendum world that has made her feel so discombobulated; left and right have no meaning any more, and – like so many British voters – she doesn’t know where her political home is.
For her past few shows, Sarah Kendall's stock in trade has been intricately crafted stories that mix fact and fiction, drawing on her childhood in Newcastle, New South Wales, and observations about the world she now lives in. Her latest show, One-Seventeen, continues in that vein, and this time she has threaded in some deeply personal material.
The first thing that greets the audience in the foyer for Danny Baker's new show, Good Time Charlie's Back!, which I saw at Princes Hall in Aldershot, is the merchandise stall, selling various items; T-shirts for £20, programmes at £10 (pre-signed!), and mugs for £8. But despite this naked determination to relieve punters of their wads, no one can accuse Baker of not giving value for money, as the show last three hours, and counting. Boy, can this man talk.
With Love from St Tropez was inspired by Shazia Mirza's visit to a beach in the south of France that had a nudist beach nearby – and it was just before the French government's ban on burkinis.
Flo and Joan are sisters (Nicola and Rosie Dempsey: they have borrowed their stage names from their nan and her sister) and you may have recently seen them on television doing advertisements for Nationwide. Others may know them from social media, and their runaway hit “The 2016 Song” about music fans' annus horribilis with the deaths of David Bowie and Prince. If you like either iteration, you will love this hour-long show, called The Kindness of Stranglers.
Ed Byrne is a worried parent. Thankfully his two young sons are hale and hearty, but he is concerned he may be bringing up a pair of pampered, Lord Fauntleroy youngsters, and in Spoiler Alert he ponders the differences between his experience of being parented as a child in the 1980s, and now being a dad himself.