AND HOW DOES Mr. Comedy spend his honeymoon? A European trip, of course. But with a long stop at the Edinburgh Fringe, a world-famous comedy festival, thrown in.
The Edinburgh Fringe has been around for more than 40 years. There are over a thousand shows, and a full third of them are comedy.
The shows, like most fringe festivals, aren’t curated, which means the quality varies wildly. But with some research, you can usually find the gems.
I saw 15 shows in four days, and there wasn’t a clunker among them.
Sometimes Canadians take the plunge and produce their shows over there. This year the only Canadian entry was MTV Canada’s Darrin Rose.
Emo Philips, called the best joke writer in America, and also MC at my wedding this past summer, was selling out all his shows in a college lecture hall that seated about 200.
Emo told me that his reaction in Scotland was better than it was in North America. The audiences in the U.K. have no problem with his sick, twisted and sharp one-liners.
His show was brilliant, a mix of new material and classic Emo.
An Aussie comic named Brendan Burns blew me away with his unstructured rants that brought to mind the late Sam Kinison. Too unstructured, perhaps.
A lot of the show meandered as the audience waited for him to ride a hot topic, which he inevitably did. Eliminate the slow spots, and Burns could be a huge star for those who like their comedy way out on the edge.
Janey Godley, a Scottish housewife and comedian was brilliant with her no-nonsense Glaswegian take on family life.
Proudly blue collar,Godley swung through takes on her married life with an Asperger’s patient.
I also saw Godley tear it up at the Stand, Glasgow’s comedy club the week before, which has the best stage backdrop I’ve ever seen: a huge Howdy Doody–style cartoon with a gun to his head.
But it was Jim Jeffries who was the most memorable. A man at the peak of his powers, he roamed the cavernous stage as he told painfully honest tales of his life.
I saw his last monologue a few years ago and failed to see what the fuss was all about. But this show converted me.
The entire second half of his act was a long shaggy dog story of helping his friend’s quadriplegic brother lose his virginity. Hilarious, touching and way politically incorrect, it proved that Jeffries is a contemporary master of stand-up.
And I suppose I can’t leave out Storm Large, who was listed as cabaret rather than comedy but there were plenty of laughs.
Imagine Sandra Bernhardt mixed with Janis Joplin and you’ll have the idea. The Portland, Oregon, native brought a crack four-piece band to accompany her ribald autobiographical songs and snappy stage patter.
There were more serious shows I enjoyed as well, such as the musicals based on the lives of Linda Lovelace and Ian Dury. But the variety is precisely the point. I could have stayed another week, and next year, perhaps I will.