Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Tadiwa Mahlunge: Inhibition Exhibition | Daniel Foxx: Villain | Matt Hutchinson: Hostile | Mark Black: Chindiana Jones

Some smart observations on sexuality, gender relations, race friction and politics can be found in our latest batch of Fringe comedy reviews.

Tadiwa Mahlunge: Inhibition Exhibition ****

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) (Venue 33) until 27 August

Opening his Fringe account by declaring that if this show's successful, he'll never play the festival again, this seems a very real possibility for Tadiwa Mahlunge. The 25-year-old, Welsh-raised Zimbabwean already has his stand-up persona down pat, an attractive cocktail of unabashed ambition, overweening arrogance and crippling insecurity. The wellspring of that stage charisma, his dysfunctional offstage relationships, is mighty.

Mahlunge's rich father impresses with his sheer commitment to being absent from his son's life, only occasionally re-emerging to remarkable non-effect. His indomitable mother is the literal beating force behind his immigrant drive to succeed, a woman without softness, schooling her child in how to visit devastating vengeance upon another comic and an upstart, class snob colleague.

The stand-up's well-meaning grandmother foists improper sexual thoughts upon him, yet he's quite capable of being inappropriate himself with his therapist, with his tendency to put women on a pedestal occasionally manifesting itself in internalised, racially abusive masochism.

Professionally, he remains committed to the latest in a series of evil, capitalist jobs. Yet his most toxic vocation, comedy, has got him hooked, while draining him of his soul and bank balance. And thanks to his clipped, middle-class accent and ethnically unthreatening looks, this African is frequently not black enough for his Black-British brethren, yet stereotypically a source of both excessive lust and fear for white women, even if he wrestles with his conscience about exploiting these to his advantage.

Switching up between cocksure swagger and appearing a total shell of a man, Mahlunge has an egotistical, inward focus but in the process, casually offers up smart observations on gender relations, generation gaps, immigrant prospects, rotten cultures in the corporate workplace and race friction. Psychologically, he's really not right. But in comedy terms, he's already looking like the complete, fully-rounded package.

Tadiwa Mahlunge: Inhibition Exhibition (Photo Copyright Jiksaw)

Jay Richardson

Daniel Foxx: Villain ****

Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand) (Venue 33) until 27 August

It was in this very room that Leo Reich enjoyed a breakout Fringe last year. And Daniel Foxx looks set to do the same with a similarly impish, queer, musical coming-of-age tale that's nevertheless far more heartfelt than the caricatured surface sheen of the 2022 best newcomer nominee's.

With his striking devil horn hairdo and kohl-eyed, shadowy make-up, gradually flattening and fading under the hot lights as he progressively grows more sincere, Foxx is an impressively accomplished act for one so relatively new, in secure knowledge of himself and his talents.

But then he's been doing the personal work since he was six-years-old, when Disney films introduced to him the idea that gay was villainous and villainy was gay. His arch, sprightly opening number establishes the show's main theme. Still Foxx, who also writes musical theatre, only deploys his keyboard sparingly, the default mode in Villain being confessional stand-up.

His upbringing was a mixed bag, with the majority of his family almost too supportive of his awakening sexuality, with the comedian essentially decrying the lack of pricks he had to kick against. School though, was another matter. There were a couple of incidents that would now be treated as hate crimes. But it was the general background homophobia, from fellow pupils and teachers, that was so insidious.

This though, is the surrounding context rather than the tone of Villain. What really sticks in the memory are the fiercely funny, often knowingly contrived, yet, equally, richly persuasive, gay readings of Disney classics. Plus Foxx's hilarious deconstruction of school nativity plays, wickedly laying bare the inappropriate casting decisions.

His love-hate relationship with aggressive, manly men is also thoroughly explored as he endearingly relates how he's ended up subverting the stereotypes that once plagued him, making for a touching, if somewhat violently threatening ending to a drolly witty and candidly personal hour.

Jay Richardson

Matt Hutchinson: Hostile ***

Assembly George Square Studios (Studio Four) (Venue 17) until 27 August

Opening with the infamous footage of a policeman bodypopping at the Notting Hill Carnival, looping as Matt Hutchinson mixes tunes on his decks, followed by MP David Lammy decrying the government's treatment of the Windrush generation, Hostile is a political show that nevertheless wears its polemic lightly.

A mixed-race junior doctor with a Jamaican father and English mother, Hutchinson has been stopped and searched on occasion by the Metropolitan Police for utterly spurious reasons. And he's incredulous at the immigration policies of the Tory administration. At the same time though, he's an amiable, middle-class nerd, not entirely resistant to the charms of gentrification, who's married up the social class ladder. So he has cause to be angry but he's agitating politely.

In this entertaining and deceptively weighty debut, Hutchinson reveals himself to be stood on several of the faultlines of Britain's struggles with its 21st century identity, and he's a thoughtful, attuned guide, an invested, wry observer rather than a rabble-rouser.

Nevertheless, there's penetrating wit to his gags about the Met's desperate efforts to rebrand itself and the Tories assaults on the NHS. And when he recounts how his baby daughter's cuteness mitigated the racism he experienced on a recent holiday, it's wince-inducingly hilarious.

Jay Richardson

Mark Black: Chindiana Jones ***

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Lounge) (Venue 14) until 13 August

Overshadowed somewhat by his viral sensation younger brother Paul playing the Gilded Balloon's biggest room downstairs, Mark Black doesn't have his insecurities to seek. Keeping his bald head under a fedora for much of his hour, the Glaswegian is nevertheless leading with his chin when it comes to musing on his most strikingly prominent body part.

And what little focus there is in his rambling but enjoyable full debut is devoted to him visiting the doctor for an ADHD diagnosis, a tale he returns to and departs from with self-parodic flightiness.

Characterising himself as canny yet capable of great stupidity, camp but straight and worldly yet naïve, his rough, rascally humour flirts with crudity, homophobia and xenophobia. Yet it only gently nudges at the boundaries of political correctness, taking licence from his lived experience, his two gay brothers and having spent time learning languages and living abroad.

As in Paul's stand-up, there's considerable interest in the tales of their evangelical, US-style Christian upbringing and their late father's devotion to it, the extent to which Black's world-view has been shaped by his singular experiences.

Chiefly though, he's aiming for relatability, mocking the entitlement of Scottish football fans and one of his stand-up forerunners, Edinburgh's own Iain Stirling, with the future of Love Island in a climate changing world. Invariably though, with himself as the ultimate punchline.

Jay Richardson