Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Flat and the Curves: Divadom | Phil Ellis' Excellent Comedy Show | Madeleine Hamilton Hamilton: Piping Hot

Our latest round-up of Fringe comedy reviews takes in a powerhouse female-fronted cabaret act, some utterly delightful bagpipe comedy, and an exquisitely ridiculous five star show.

Flat and the Curves: Divadom ****

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 27 August

Electrifying the Queen Dome with their big, bold tunes, songwriting flair and irresistible feminist fierceness, Flat and the Curves are a powerhouse cabaret act that burn with the wattage of four distinct stars. The night I caught them, their cheek mics had failed beforehand but they still delivered an outstanding set of relatable balladry and peerless, anthemic bangers, running the lyrical gamut from sophisticated relationship satire to crude, drunken misadventures and down-and-dirty horniness.

Katy Baker, Issy Wroe Wright, Arabella Rodrigo and Charlotte Brooke take turns to dominate the spotlight yet harmonise beautifully. Of their more obvious homages, an impassioned ABBA tribute finds Wroe Wright leading the lament for the collapse of a marriage's honeymoon period in a well-known furniture store, while a nostalgic number for one's bygone “slut years” pairs graphic finger miming with an overblown, Jim Steinman-style arrangement.

Brooke exquisitely pastiches the sinister, incel energy of young, male singer-songwriters. And one of the standouts is a light opera performance that finds the foursome protesting the porn-influenced demands of their partners, as they appeal in vain for more considered foreplay.

At the show's heart is a resentful, recriminatory howl of anguish at yet another hen do, that yet initially trills with some of the flutey sweetness of The Andrews Sisters, before swiftly degenerating into absolute carnage and depravity, leaving the Curves splayed in disarray around the stage. Picking themselves up off the canvas in the next song, it's an honest assessment of self-disgust that nevertheless culminates in a moment of libidinous triumph.

Mocking those men who regress in their mother's orbit, soulfully savaging perverts and even letting a song about dog psychology erupt into a frenzy of base desires, toxic masculinity is one of Divadom's recurring themes.

Flat and the Curves: Divadom (Photo Copyright Karla Gowlett)

Yet whether singing about their periods in perfect synch, or reclaiming the cultural pre-eminence of their sexual organs, it's women who dominate and are conspicuously celebrated in Flat and the Curves' dazzling spectacle.

Jay Richardson

Phil Ellis' Excellent Comedy Show *****