Phil Ellis's show Bath Mat (Monkey Barrel, four stars) must have the longest musical intro in the history of the Edinburgh Fringe. At one point I thought the theme from Titanic was going to be the entire show. It certainly goes on a bit before Ellis pops his head through the curtains, Eric Morecambe-style to begin the show for real. Can the rest of his hour sustain this surreal start? No problem. Ellis has a style that evokes Eric and Ernie, old school working men clubs and Vic and Bob, which to me is no bad thing. Garnish it with his own low status sensibility and you've got a winning formula.
Ellis says that this is a bit of a gateway show into his world. I guess it's a version of the show he has been touring to audiences who have only just discovered him from Taskmaster. Some of the routines will be familiar to fans of his previous Edinburgh shows but that doesn't mean they are past their tell-by date. There are some particularly sublime surprises which I won't reveal and while some of it feels a bit off-the-cuff chaotic it all works. I'm particularly fond of his childhood birthday party picture with a big dog on a seat for no apparent reason.
About twenty years ago – was it really that long ago? – Micky Flanagan broke through with a show about moving from working class Londoner to middle class ponce. Madeleine Brettingham (Gilded Balloon, four stars) is surely set to strike it big following her assured debut show in which she charts a similar path but with a few notable twists, starting out in Bournemouth and ending up at Cambridge, caught between two worlds – "split habitus" as us posh students of sociology call it.
For Brettingham, however, this is not an entirely happy story. It's clear that she didn't always have an easy relationship with her father, and while this is a show that does involve a dead dad, it's not exactly the sad type one has come to expect from a full-length comedy show. Brettingham covers all sorts of emotional bases in her hour and finishes on a rather unexpected set-piece. The writing is sharp, and there is a keen eye for detail. She hasn't quite got a universal Out Out routine yet but her story of breaking into the college May Ball by climbing a wall because she didn't want to pay for a ticket is pretty impressive.
Olga Koch (below) has gone full multi-media for her latest show, Fat Tom Cruise (Pleasance Courtyard, four stars), with big white screens flashing up dates, times and transcripts so that we can keep up with her fast-moving, well-researched story that shuttles between the 1970s and the modern day. Koch also does nifty dance moves between each segment so that things never get too Ted Talky.
This is Koch's best show yet and also her most serious, as she harks back to various landmark court cases in the gender debate. It's a show with a twist though, Koch is never predictable and always compelling as she juxtaposes events from her own life – drugs and sex are involved as they usually are in her shows – with accounts of frat boys on campus and wider global news. Koch is an unstoppable force of comedy and don't worry, the title will all make sense as she builds towards a dramatic conclusion.
I've always been a lover of awkward comedy and I don't think you 'll see a comedian more awkwardly funny that Australia's Dan Rath (Monkey Barrel, four stars). From the moment he walks on he looks like he'd rather be anywhere than onstage. He's scruffy, low status and very, very funny. Imagine Napoleon Dynamite growing up and having a crack at stand-up.
Help Me Please finds Rath as bemused at the world as ever and trying to make sense of things. Maybe the flat-earther cult is booming because all the real news is behind a paywall, he wonders, perhaps with good reason. If men driving flash cars are compensating for having a small penis, what does that say about someone driving a rent-a-wreck?
At one point after a particular pithy gag he says "There’s no segues there," as if the audience hadn't noticed that already. It doesn't really matter about non sequiturs when the punchlines pitch up so regularly. Rath does not quite slot into the anti-comedy camp because his gags are well-written and accessible. He's more anti-human than anti-comedy. Lo-fi stand-up doesn't get much funnier.
Bebe Cave's show Swoon (Gilded Balloon, three stars) is something of a high concept oddity. It's the story of Bertrude, the fictional sister of the real Elizabeth Siddal, who modelled for the famous painting of flaxen-haired Ophelia by Millais. Still with me? My first thought was sisters? Someone with exceptionally long hair? Sounds like Bebe's sister Jessie Cave, the performer who sells pictures of her luscious locks on Only Fans?
Gradually Bebe makes this comparison more explicit. I don't know if Siddal had a Liverpool accent in reality but Cave's version does, and Jessie's partner Alfie Brown is an ardent Reds fan. Anyway, there is much more going on here than a tale of sibling rivalry, it's also about women being written out of history - Cave cites several Victorian examples while also getting some great laughs out of the steampunk cult.
It was all a little too much for me to take in though. Maybe there are too many ideas here, which is not something you can say about many Fringe shows. If I'm honest my favourite part was Cave talking to a dummy, which owed more Morecambe and Wise than it did to the rise of feminism.
