Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Paul Foot: Dissolve | Horatio Gould: Sweet Prince | Bronwyn Sweeney: Off-Brand | Freya Parker: It Ain't Easy Being Cheeky | Thenjiwe - The Mandela Effect

In our latest batch of comedy reviews, a Fringe veteran gets unusually personal and delivers some of the best material of his career, while a Fringe debutant offers up a familiar if promising portrait of a messed-up, middle-class beta male

Paul Foot: Dissolve ****

Underbelly, Cowgate (Belly Dancer) (Venue 61) until 27 August

In a stand-up career spanning more than two decades, singular, surrealist comic Paul Foot has tended to eschew personal material. This then, is something of a watershed, as he recounts how the deep depression and anxiety that plagued him for 38 years dissolved in an instant. Not that he's an open book now, far from it. When he complains that as a gay man, he's only recently been allowed to donate blood, it's a passing mention in a gloriously furious tirade against thin-skinned, anti-woke Boomers. An allegorical life lesson that his mother tried to teach him is instantly rejected as a hateful sop for reviewers, while his account of youthfully orienteering with his father deliberately leads the audience up a garden path to nowhere. Any potential, unresolved teenage problems are placed in the demented context of being the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, grappling with all the usual hormones and exam worries at the same time as trying to maintain a dynasty. And Foot even presents one of his trademark “Disturbances”, a musing on Jesus, to suggest that essentially, this remains business as usual.

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Yet agitatedly stomping around his stage in a blue boilersuit, dripping with disdainful sarcasm as he envisages a utopian start-over in which human nature nevertheless reintroduces all the same regressive shit we've got now, he delivers a compelling show about trauma even as he entertainingly subverts it. There is sober disclosure and frank admission of vulnerability, more so than in the rest of his career combined. Yet he recognises that trying to precisely analyse the chemical imbalances of mental illness is a fool's errand. And that after all the capering and deflection have been exhausted, he's not the fool to offer any more than a straightforward account. Besides, the miraculous way in which his life has been saved remains largely mysterious, even to him. And even if the rejuvenating effects are a delight to behold. Jay Richardson

Horatio Gould: Sweet Prince ***

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

Although blessed with an insane name by his characterful father, Horatio Gould's Fringe debut offers a familiar portrait of a mildly messed-up, middle-class beta male. His practically inept, angst-ridden existence is set in stark contrast to his dad's, with Gould Sr a blithe yet chilled blend of right-wing geezer and new age hippy. Once these immediate aspects of his personality are established though, Gould emerges as a darker, more compelling soul. Like his regular collaborator Fin Taylor, he's interested in sharing contentious opinions, perhaps trying to argue you round but prioritising the laugh above all else. No lazy edgelord dumping on minorities for the sake of flashy provocation, he's having fun with his thoughts for sure, but invariably grounds even his wildest, insincere suggestions in his own psychological failings. That the Nazis looked sharp in their Hugo Boss uniforms is a fairly well-worn stand-up trope. But Gould takes the makeover vibe through several groups of hate figures into ridiculous extremes. Acknowledging his attraction to ISIS bride Shamima Begum and putting up a defence of J.K. Rowling's former woke credentials that the Harry Potter author won't thank him for, he's an original, probing wit. With a wide variety of preoccupations and insecurities, Gould might benefit from taking on fewer, bigger subjects and picking them apart with the same mischievous panache. Jay Richardson

Paul Foot.Paul Foot.
Paul Foot.

Bronwyn Sweeney: Off-Brand ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three) (Venue 33) until 28 August

Imagining herself in a made-for-television holiday movie, the high-flying advertising executive who doesn't know how to pitch herself on the dating scene, Bronwyn Sweeney tells us that this show is her attempt to “atone” for her former career. As the main protagonist's sassy, ethnically indeterminate best friend moreover, the 37-year-old is the product of a Zimbabwean mother and Irish father, with a Welsh name who was born in Blackpool, but grew up with an American accent after an itinerant childhood and teenage spell pursuing footballers in Italy. You can see her problem. And she can't leave her marketing past behind so easily. Nicknamed after a quintessentially British condiment, she offers a step-by-step breakdown of her character and life, via four basic advertising tenets. With a diverting enough tale, Sweeney is an engaging individual and you never doubt that she was successful in her erstwhile occupation, not least when she alludes to some of the familiar campaigns she created. Yet her flip chart-enabled structure is a little rigid and systematic and there's nothing that truly surprises beyond some bracingly open admissions of the central role of masturbation in her life. The rebrand as a comic is going fine but she's nowhere near being a market leader yet. Jay Richardson

Freya Parker: It Ain't Easy Being Cheeky ***

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

Best known as half of the popular sketch double-act Lazy Susan, Freya Parker's solo Fringe debut is a stand-up hour which, tongue-rather-lodged-in-cheek, attempts to popularise the archetype of the “cheeky guy”. Standing five foot on the button and with dolphin impressions to boot, Parker casts herself as the epitome of this loveable scamp, though truly pinning down the character is trickier. Was it cheeky when she feigned disability on a childhood holiday to impress? Or that time she inexplicably left a horrendous message on a friend's mother's answermachine? The concept doesn't seem to bear much scrutiny and feels like a creakily contrived conceit to hang a show on. Yet the reason for Parker's clubbable, ingratiating performance, the indulgence of her adolescent behaviour and, maybe, the impetus for her comedy career, is suddenly revealed. With the story now shared, it'll be interesting to see whether she continues to pursue stand-up or whether this is just a stop-off on her recovery process. It Ain't Easy's underlying purpose rather inhibits Parker's potential in the artform. And ironically, for all its deeply personal meaning, the show settles into an established Fringe pattern. Yet maybe this cheeky little guy isn't quite finished yet. Jay Richardson

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Thenjiwe - The Mandela Effect ***Just the Tonic @ The Mash House (venue 288) until 27 August

We are, as Thenjiwe points out, very lucky to be here in the middle of an arts festival, with the opportunity to listen to people from all over the world. Thenjiwe is from South Africa, and she brings an interesting perspective from an African point of view.

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She plays with language, chiding us gently for our unwillingness to pronounce African words, particularly her own name. She tells us in no uncertain terms why she doesn’t want any of us to touch her splendid Afro hairdo – even though people always want to do so.

Thenjiwe is a likeable and confident performer, who deals admirably with a malfunctioning microphone, and there is no doubt she has much to say, about colonialism, about the world’s lack of willingness to engage with Africa and about her own life experience. But the biographical details are too sketchy, and she has a tendency to go for easy targets and over obvious punchlines. Is she really a lawyer or a call centre worker? Does she live in London or South Africa? Is she rich or poor? Does she seriously think Bill Cosby is innocent? As a comic Thenjiwe is still too much of an enigma. Claire Smith

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