Fringe comedy reviews: Jack Docherty | Huge Davies | Fatiha El-Ghorri | Lou Wall | Matthew Gallagher

Jack Docherty: Butterfly | Steve Ullathorne

Jack Docherty: Butterfly ★★★★★

Dining Room at Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 29 August

It is a pleasure and something of a privilege - not to overstate the case - to be part of an audience wrapped in the funny that Jack Docherty creates here. It is warm, it is personal and it is absolutely (no pun intended, for those of us who are long-standing fans) everything you could want from an hour of largely autobiographical comedy.

It is also clever, not too clever, but beautifully crafted, carved from a delicious big clootie dumpling of memories and thoughts, personal moments, mistakes and triumphs, fears and fun.

When this comes, as this show does, from a great big open comedy heart, it is a wonderful experience. The whole room laughs. For pretty much the whole hour. And that is an extraordinary thing.

The crafting of the show is exquisite. If you will pardon the fanciful phrasing here, the eponymous butterfly of Docherty's humour flits from his own relationship with his parents to the importance of having friends who are terminally ill, and from a merciless critique of several internal organs to babies on Instagram.

His relationship with his father is a touchstone in the comedy and in the narrative, his sex life is explored with brutally joyous honesty, his relationship with his own kids, his time as a drug testing sperm donor and his confronting of his own emotional unavailability, impending death and how the Butterfly Effect almost explains how we ended up with Trump in the White House, are all not so much grist to a comedy mill as shiny sixpences in that delicious clootie dumpling.

There is absolutely nothing not to love, not to enjoy and not to warm to in our time with Jack. For someone who says he is emotionally unavailable, while we might not get 'all the feels' we do get plenty of them.

This is the kind of hour of laughter that is decades in the making and it is a masterclass in comedy. When my GP next gets out his stethoscope, he will have to forgive me for falling about the place laughing. Kate Copstick

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Huge Davies: Sleep Paralysis Princess ★★★★

CabVol at Monkey Barrel (Venue 338) until 30 August

Insomnia will drive you crazy. It’ll make you spiky and paranoid – brain dead even. Maybe you’ll start believing you’re cursed and will shout about old people who don’t know how lucky they are to be able temporarily to free themselves of consciousness in any given setting.

An hour in Huge Davies’s company is not relaxing. But it’s certainly not boring, either. He says he hasn’t slept properly for ten years. Whether this is true or not, and whether his unpredictable, sometimes aggressive vibe is a persona or real, he’s an electrifying performer.

He enters the room from behind, wearing a chef’s hat and shouting: “Heads!” like he’s already had to tell us a thousand times today and hates us for it. If we don’t move out of the way, you see, our bonces will get bumped by the massive keyboard that’s hung around his neck like a cigarette girl’s giant tray.

If you’re hoping for David O’Doherty-flavoured whimsy, you’ve come to the wrong place: Davies conjures sounds from his instrument that sometimes feel like they’re from a horror film. The way he distorts his voice shifts from sinister (think voice disguisers in movies about a kidnapping) to creepily euphoric, the culty vibes linking cleverly with a theory about a hex that grows into something quite brilliant and involves us in the most unexpected ways.

There’s plenty of levity along the way, from the best Henry VIII bit you’ll hear all decade to an uncanny description of Laser Quest.

This is the kind of show that’ll have you thinking for weeks after you’ve seen it – probably when you’re going demented with exhaustion. It’s fascinating, funny, unnerving and unique. If you only see one alienating stand-up in a chef’s hat with a large keyboard strapped to his body this Fringe, make it Huge Davies. Ashley Davies

Fatiha El-Ghorri: Cockney Stacking Doll ★★★

Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 30 August

She’s a properly funny woman, that Fatiha El-Ghorri. In this enjoyable hour, the Taskmaster alumna reveals her vast capacity for making a crowd laugh. She’s the first to point out that what comes out of her mouth doesn’t quite match her wrapping; it’s true that most of us in this room don’t normally get to hear that much swearing from a woman in a hijab.

El-Ghorri talks us through amusing stories from her life, including vivid snippets about her family (her parents come from Morocco and she has many siblings, and the competition for space at parties can sometimes lead to the most unexpected punchlines).

There are some fun stories about getting into trouble, including at the mosque, and there’s an attractive authenticity in her descriptions of where she comes from, being from “the hood”, having to be tough, and what gentrification is doing to her part of East London.

You could argue that Cockney Stacking Doll feels more like a collection of quality club sets than a carefully structured Fringe hour; while El-Ghorri quite rightly devotes a few minutes to telling us some of what she’s been through medically and socially, this might have felt more satisfying if it was weaved through more carefully.

It’s a small quibble, though, because she’s got natural, cheeky comedy talent and is swimming in charisma. Ashley Davies

READ MORE: Who Has Won The Edinburgh Comedy Award? 14 of the most famous winners

Lou Wall: Where Are all the Tall Grandmas? ★★★

Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 30 August

Lou Wall is 6’5”, and people – including a security guard at a Chinese airport who called them “big lady” – sure feel free to remark upon it. Using a mixture of funny, rap-heavy songs, fast-paced storytelling and multimedia, Wall takes us on an adventure to find out the truth about something most of us have probably never considered.

Why don’t we ever see tall old women? Sure, age-related shrinkage is a thing, but, in truth, nobody really loses more than a couple of inches in their lifetime. Maybe Wall is on to something. Where are they? After investigating some of the places Wall thinks they might find them, and using a playful but loaded leitmotif about playing hide and seek, they share their findings.

At the risk of sounding like a clickbait headline, what you hear near the end will shock you, but the final song, a hauntingly beautiful message about the importance of taking up space will stay with you too.

Wall is a witty, charismatic presence with a warm approach to inclusiveness. If you have any tall older women in your life, please do bring them to this show. Ashley Davies

Matthew Gallagher: Last Minute ★★

The Stand Comedy Club 2 (Venue 5) until 30 August

Matthew Gallagher's naturally funny, an idiot who comically rails against being depicted as such. But if you're going to joke about being last-minute and under-prepared for your Fringe debut, it should be a conceit that you're going to undermine.

Over-reliant on working his crowd up initially, offering them the poison chalice of sharing their Donald Trump impressions, it's awkward and doesn't convince anyone that they're in for a good time.

Some of his lines are decent, his act outs play to his clownish strengths and in his nod to Rodney Dangerfield, he's got a persona he could probably profitably emulate. But there's just too much barely disguised panicking here. Jay Richardson

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