Fringe comedy reviews: Phil Ellis: Bath Mat | Ting Lim: Asian But Wrong | Jonno: Here Comes Mr Funny | Eva Peroni: Jungled | Lawrence Dodd: This Can't Be It

Phil Ellis | Image: contributed

COMEDY

Phil Ellis: Bath Mat ★★★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515) until 30 August

I love the line from Eric Morecambe when he tells André Previn he’s playing “all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order”.

This show is Phil Ellis, playing all the right notes in exactly the right order.

There’s a lot of material you may have heard before if you’ve ever had the absolute joy of seeing one of Ellis’ Edinburgh shows.

These are his best bits, but polished to perfection, like pebbles shining in a river in the cold northern English sun. This Edinburgh run is the jump off point for his first, full national tour.

What’s absolutely wonderful is that Ellis is playing to a bigger, broader audience thanks to the Taskmaster effect. Is he ready for it? Oh yes.

The man sitting next to me paid for an Edinburgh Fringe experience and is translating Phil’s show line by line into German for his wife alongside him. Before Phil came on stage he told me he’d heard of the Tattoo but never visited the Fringe or even heard of it. I’m not sure he’d ever been to a comedy gig. A lesser comedian might be put off his stride – but not Phil – he’s such a natural comic and so skilled at playing with whatever energy he finds in the room. He’s been listening to rooms for years and he’s listened well.

He still plays the old downbeat persona, but the meta references and in jokes have been swept aside. It wouldn’t work with this new audience, and Phil wants to keep everyone happy.

Despite appearing to run out of time and fumbling with his tech, Phil is an absolute pro. The fumbling is all part of his schtick. It puts people at ease. Ellis knows exactly what he is up to.

We’re laughing with him, we’re laughing at him. It doesn’t matter as long as we are all laughing and we are. Special mention to Tom Short, who is back as Phil’s hype man. I think his entrance might have been the German man’s favourite bit of the show. It has made his holiday. He has no idea Phil planned it all. Could Phil Ellis do all this in a stadium or an arena gig? I think he could. He could have all the watermelons he’s ever wanted.

Will it change him? I don’t think it will. He’s a total gem. Claire Smith

COMEDY

Ting Lim: Asian But Wrong ★★★★

The Wee Room at Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters, (Venue 272) until 30 August

Crammed into one of the tiniest spaces on the Fringe – the karaoke bar at the Three Sisters – this is a fantastic Fringe debut show.

Ting Lim is no ingenue; she appears as the terrifying Debbie Lim on Fisk, the Australian show about an Australian law firm on Netflix.

The outrageous modesty of the 20-seat venue means she’s guaranteed a sell-out, but it’s a shame she doesn’t have a bigger room for this well written, nicely structured and very funny hour.

Lim sets her scene meticulously, telling how she grew up in Singapore with a Malaysian mother before emigrating to Australia as an adult. She talks about family, about missing home and how growing up Buddhist but attending a Christian school gave her a confusing notion of how to be a good person.

She has material on racism, on relationships and on her own route to becoming a comic, which play well with both Asian and non-Asian audience members. There’s even a sneaky Seinfeld reference for the comedy nerds.

Lim flips her narrative expertly, throwing assumptions on their head and playing with some of the stereotypes people project onto people who look like her.

There is psychological insight, some advice on talking to parents, and a very unique take on Chinese versus Western medicine. There’s also a jaw dropping revelation about her family tree. Sometimes her delivery is a bit rushed – but there are so many great stories here and a great perspective on how it feels to fall between different cultures. Claire Smith

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COMEDY

Jonno: Here Comes Mr Funny ★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Monkey Barrel 2) (Venue 515) until 30 August

As head writer on Saturday Night Live UK and one-third of Fringe favourite sketch group Sheeps, Daran “Jonno” Johnson has considerable comedy pedigree. Yet while Here Comes Mr Funny has been in development for while, this festival debut is his first foray into stand-up since he was 19, half his lifetime ago. The reason only gradually becomes clear. But from the surreally warped Christmas love song with which he opens, Sheeps fans will appreciate the clever feints and deft swerves he's plotted through this hour, sending up the conventions of stand-up as he resistently embraces the artform. Too subtle in some of his wheezes, too overt in others, but with snatches of genuine brilliance, it's an impish curate's egg of a show. His abiding set-piece is a medley of rejected James Bond themes, a surface, superficial plunge into 007 lore that yet manages to be almost impossibly elaborate and polished, a masterpiece of pastiche. When it drops, the disclosure for why he finds performing so difficult is affecting. But Jonno doesn't yet have the stagecraft to smoothly switch his sincerity on and off, to channel his natural mateyness and overflow of wit into broader human connection. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Eva Peroni: Jungled ★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 30 August

An easy to recommend Fringe debut from an upcoming but almost fully formed Scottish talent, Jungled charts Eva Peroni's journey of personal discovery from Livingston to Edinburgh University via Costa Rica, juicy with engaging stories and self-mockery but also flinty opinion. Seguing smoothly from her initial crowd work to chippy, hyperlocal material about being a minority, working-class Scottish student in the capital, the 22-year-old is unsparing about Bathgate's musical icons, Lewis Capaldi and Susan Boyle and wry about her eccentric family. These include her wayward dad – deliciously in the audience on the afternoon I saw it – and serial killer cousin – hopefully not in the venue – with nothing in Peroni's demeanour to suggest anything but minor embellishment in her account. Growing up neurodivergent and queer, yet confused and repressed, she tacked hard to ned-dom and fell into drugs. So with exquisite irony, she was sent to straighten out in South America, booking a sidequest to Columbia, and after some further tangents, found the confidence to come out as gay. Intermittently warm and relatable, then scathing and odd, Peroni also projects the aura of someone belatedly realising their potential. Expect to hear plenty more from her in the next few years. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Lawrence Dodd: This Can't Be It ★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 31 August

With his unkempt beard, short shorts and ripped shirt, Lawrence Dodd is a purveyor of clowning anti-comedy from the hippyish end of the spectrum. Sure, he's a seasoned stand-up he assures you, able to do this and that, that and this. But he's not really clear, gabbling in indistinct chatter and wandering round the room with a wild, distracted look in his expressive, soulful eyes. Drawing you in with these harmless ravings, he's rarely static onstage, clambering over and in and out of the crowd, seemingly compelled by the mood music in his head, trying to get us to hear it and feel it too as he orchestrates different pockets in imaginary instruments. Sharing snatches of memories, his own and others to have come into his benign orbit, he's grasping for moments of ecstatic epiphany, confounding those who depart early yet gradually bonding the majority left in the cult-like embrace of his eccentricity. Unlike many clowns who intimidate with their demands for recognition and gratification, Dodd is only gently persuading. And the peace and love, communal vibe is palpable, a spiritual balm that you'll feel lingering afterwards as you head back into the night. Jay Richardson

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