Alfie Brown is smart enough to know what the inherent problem is with his latest show. In 2024 he delivered a groundbreaking tour de force, Open Hearted Human Enquiry, which tackled family bereavement and being cancelled when old texts were unearthed and taken out of context. Follow that. As he says himself at the start, "I've had my coming out party, now I'm just gay."
His response is The Entertainer (Underbelly, four stars). Is he attempting to go mainstream? The smily, shiny suited posters certainly seem to suggest that. But Brown is too something or other (note to self, this is a great review but needs an apt adjective here) to go mainstream. He can't help thinking one step ahead of himself, commenting on how his jokes have landed, how the audience is responding, hoping to get a clip that he can post online. He is reviewing his own set even before it is finished.
He announces that in a bid for more exposure, this show is all about the most shared subjects – dogs, porn, Trump, parenting. He then works through them, picking out new angles on old tropes, being the arch provocateur he always has been, whether talking about putting his dog in an Arsenal shirt or revealing that he feels like he has a new cock after taking testosterone supplements. Try that on The One Show. There's a romantic routine about marriage, but this is Alfie Brown, it's definitely not your normal marriage routine. The Entertainer is Brown on good rather than great form and feels a little transitional. It's a show that makes me want to see his next show.
I wrote about Edinburgh Comedy Award winners returning to the Fringe a few days ago and I overlooked 2004 winner Will Adamsdale. (Underbelly, four stars) Maybe that's not surprising though. Of all the past winners he has probably had the lowest profile. After winning the award he shunned any big offers and decided to get his head down and write a book about chess.
He is back now, playing one of the Fringe's modest tin hut with in AI, AI, Oh... (Or How I Wrote a Hit Sitcom with ChatGPT But We're Not Talking Now) and telling the tale of how he moved to the country and nearly landed a major American deal. There's some great humour here as he paints his relationship with his family as they attempt to relocate and reconnect. "Act natural dad, but not your natural," says his perma-embarrassed son.
It's a new world of awkward middle aged male conversation and tentative friendships but Adamsdale cracks on with his writing and makes one major new chum. ChatGPT. After years of shunning technology can ChatGPT help him write his streaming giant opus? This is not a high-concept show like past Adamsdale works, just a warm piece of storytelling. There's a bit of a Daniel Kitson vibe to it as Adamsdale goes analogue, playing dialogue on an old tape recorder and reading printouts of text messages. The main thing to note is that there are plenty of laughs and you will be hooked to the very end. Oh, and maybe Hollywood is missing a trick – this older Adamsdale looks like a dead ringer for Robin Williams. If Hollywood ever plans a biopic that really could be his big break.
Adamsdale was followed in the same venue by Tom Neenan, who also had a tale to tell in Portrait of a Tom as a Young Neenan (Underbelly, three stars). This yarn involves Neenan being commissioned to paint the portrait of an eccentric old duffer with delusions of grandeur. At one point he asks to be painted with medals on his chest – the medals he asks for suggests he was a soldier from WW1 to the 1980s. And not always on the British side. Neenan explains how he developed this side hustle, alongside another one defacing £10 notes, which he admits has never really turned a profit.
Neenan is a very watchable raconteur, piling on the details, popping in the obligatory self-deprecation and opening up about his body image issues. He's more of a do-er than a joiner. When he had an eating order instead of signing up to a group he set up his own self-help group. It's a neatly told tale with plenty of nice touches. It doesn't quite slot together as crisply as it might, but if you like your comedy somewhere genial between Stephen Fry and Miles Jupp this should be your thing. And he does such a good impression of Louis Theroux you'll think the grand inquisitor himself is in the room.
The talk of the town at the moment is not a stand-up show, it's a song. Man Sings the Same Song Over and Over Again for an Hour (Summerhall, four stars) does exactly what it says on the tin. Australian clown Conk sings the same song, I think fifteen times, though I was so delirious after 45 minutes I can't be sure. Repetition is a strange thing in comedy. Stewart Lee has made an art out of it, the way things start of funny, stop being funny then get even funnier. And that's kind of what happens here.
Conk is not the first person to do something performance arty like this. There's A Young Man Dressed As A Gorilla Dressed As An Old Man Sits Rocking In A Rocking Chair For Fifty-Six Minutes And Then Leaves, but that's only one performance a year. Comedian Stuart Laws also did a thing repeating Michael Caine saying "Never" for 60 minutes. But there is something mesmerising about Conk's approach. And something joyous. By the end, everybody is joining in. Reviewers have been asked not to reveal the song but rest assured by the end of the show you will know all the words. Whether you want to or not.
Hannah Byczkowski (Gilded Balloon, three stars) is doing a gig in the turrett in a Scottish building that looks like a castle. And she was in the very first series of Traitors. doing pretty well too. And yet she doesn't mention the hit show in Killer. Is this a contractual thing? Does she want to be known purely as a stand-up (she was a stand-up before Traitors, this isn't a career switcheroo)? I wonder how many of the audience were there for the hot poop on Claudia Winkleman's capes?
Anyway, there's no Claudia here. What you you get is an hour of high energy zebra printed in-your-face hun fun that doesn't break any creative barriers but does keep the audience laughing. There's banter about her weird family and friends, her health and generally the things that piss Hannah off, like shitty tattoos. Oh, and houses that have writing on the wall such as the word 'Home'.
Is the world ready for a northen Joan Rivers? I'm not sure if everyone in the room wanted to known about Hannah's labia lips dropping, but it certainly makes a change from middle aged men talking about their balls dragging across the floor. Byczkowski also has a podcast about the supernatural, Ghost Huns, and wraps things up with a deft routine about death. Is there life after death? I don't know, but Killer certainly shows that there is life after Traitors.
Alfie Brown picture (top) by Jack Finnegan
