Reviews: Welcome to the most absurdly crazy world orbiting the Fringe, featuring some of the most original comic concepts and laugh out loud moments of any Edinburgh show in the past 20 years. There are echoes of Michael Bentine's Potty Time as Simmons creates a universe out of objects that have fallen down the back of his couch.
Sam Simmons - Problems, Gilded Balloon Teviot Wine Bar
Star rating: *****
Welcome to the most absurdly crazy world orbiting the Fringe, featuring some of the most original comic concepts and laugh out loud moments of any Edinburgh show in the past 20 years.
Sam mesmerises his audience with a tiny Lego man suspended on a piece of cat gut, gets them in the groove with his hip-swinging dance moves and seduces with a sonorous voice singing mental melodies.
There are echoes of Michael Bentine's Potty Time as Simmons creates a universe out of objects that have fallen down the back of his couch. A plastic fish full of soy sauce, lonely pens and the aforementioned Lego for starters. And yes he does actually eat it, for reasons that are too complicated to get into here.
Punctuating the weird and wonderful are one- liners about such things as why having sex with a snowman might make people uncomfortable, wearing a pair of disco bread shoes and some outstanding cat impressions. But then all these are the wild hallucinations of a man high on a mouldy mothball (also found down the back of the couch).
Sam's prop is a flip chart that is the work of an idiot savant, your only guide on a journey to uncharted comedy locations.
Until August 30.
Sarah Millican - Typical Woman, Pleasance Courtyard Beside
Star rating: *** The most endearing part of Sarah's show this year is the gag about her boobs being called Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker, which I leave you to work out for yourselves.
Her premise is gender stereotyping, with customary dry observations. Has the emphasis changed now women are putting up shelves and men are crying about the results?
She established a reputation as the new queen of thirtysomething angst last year, and consolidates rather than builds on that with this show.
Tales of domestic horrors with her new boyfriend are amusing, particularly the flatulent side-effects of a nice carvery meal for just £6.99.
Spicier but not too hot are details of efforts to improve their sex life with a manual, although with Millican you always get the feeling that a Women's Own annual might be a better bet. And that is even after asserting that her boyfriend, clad in a balaclava for a rape fantasy, looked too comfortable in the role.
Her strength is contrasting the non-butter melting mouth with an acid tongue and builders' vocabulary. At her best few can touch her, but this was falling a little short of that, if she wants to stay Up Where She Belongs.
Until August 30.
Rhod Gilbert - The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst, Pleasance One
Star rating: *****
The title for Rhod's new show has been deliberately fashioned to flummox a fan in Canterbury who always brings an appropriate gift when it tours there.
Grapes and mince pies from previous years were clearly too easy, hence this year's demented allusion to the Only Fools And Horses' actor.
Gilbert vents rage at inanimate objects like few other comedians, and this year the bane of his life has been a washing machine.
The rinse cycles are so complex, retrieving clothes is like trying to take a frisbee off a Rotweiler, he wails.
Running it a close second is a vacuum cleaner with variable suction power, driving Rhod into varying states of hysteria.
His skill is weaving recurring themes into a narrative, and while many compare him to Cleese's Basil Fawlty for manic obsession, the Welshman is closer to Billy Connolly's talent for shaggy dog stories with a colossal punchline.
Recounting how a series of events landed him in psychiatric evaluation with a complex diagnosis is a beautiful set-up for this year's best Big Brother joke, save for the actual television series itself, of course.
Any show that can work lifesaving in a swimming pool and Rodney from Peckham into its climax deserves every accolade going.
Until August 31. Sold out, but extra shows to be announced.
- By Colin Somerville
