Fringe comedy reviews: John Kearns | Celya AB | Kemah Bob | Spencer Jones | Bilal Zafar
From a literary spin through a failed relationship and an SNL UK writer reflecting on past insecurities, to a show about why we should be a bit more like dogs, this year’s Fringe is full of comedians taking stock of their lives in funny and revealing ways, writes Ashley Davies
John Kearns: Tilting at Windmills ★ ★ ★ ★
Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 30 August
Celya AB: We Must Stop Meeting Like This ★ ★ ★ ★
Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 30 August
Kemah Bob: Love Child ★ ★ ★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August
Spencer Jones: Dogs ★ ★ ★ ★
Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 30 August
Bilal Zafar: Rubicon ★ ★ ★
Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue 302), until 30 August
In his trademark shaggy, lobsided bald-patch wig and big false teeth, John Kearns performs a tenderly poetic hour that’s all about important changes in his life.
It’s been a year since his relationship ended (there’s a clue in the title, Tilting at Windmills, in addition to some beautiful metaphors from sources as disparate as the Highway Code and The Goon Show) and he’s been living with his parents as he prepares his next move. An estate agent makes an appearance, but this is no observational hackery.
While Kearns doesn’t dwell on the relationship, there’s enough about the effect of it ending to turn an eccentrically funny show into something incredibly moving. Snippets about everything from Antiques Roadshow and his young son’s story preferences, to his own outrageous advice on what to do before a party, swirl around in a beautiful hour that’ll have you racing home to re-read TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.
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“My favourite thing is when audiences go ‘ha ha’,” says Celya AB, who has been so busy writing for SNL UK that she only had eight weeks to create this new show, We Must Stop Meeting Like This.
A “silly billy” with a dark childhood, the French Algerian who moved to Birmingham - of all places - to reinvent herself, is taking stock of where she is in her life.
With the lightest possible touch sugarcoating some serious candour, she considers self-esteem, starting with her father telling her she’d be beautiful if she got a nose job and learning that he’d praise her more when she showed him how smart she was.
Thanks to emotional eating, she was much heavier when younger, but after she lost the weight she started getting a different sort of validation – this time for her looks. “I’ve been told I’m doing OK by UK standards,” she jokes in a way that only she can.
She’s tried to quit comedy, but the fulfilment and understanding it gives her are too powerful to give up. Having neglected her own needs in past relationships, this is the key source of her validation now. But she does hint at other yearnings, and perhaps we’ll get to hear more about those in her next show.
Celia AB has a uniquely playful delivery and an authenticity that’s hard to resist. We do indeed go “ha ha” a lot.
When do we feel like adults? Can we compare our parents’ decisions and experiences with our own, particularly if they had kids when they were young? And what about the effect of generational trauma on our ability to make sense of it all, or improve upon what we had?
These are heavy themes, but in the capable hands of Kemah Bob, they’re introduced with the kind of breezy charm that proves, once again, that the Texan-born, UK-based comedian is very good at their job.
An interaction at an after-party triggers thoughts about what being a good mother requires, and Bob delivers an entertaining hour that makes the most of their considerable wit and charisma and lightly-worn intelligence.
Spencer Jones has funny bones. Entering the prop-strewn room wearing a daft suit and mask, he immediately has us in stitches with a disruptive bit of physical comedy.
As indicated in its title, Dogs, this show devotes quite a bit of time to pooches, either the way their owners talk about them (there’s a lovely bit on the smugness displayed by the “he’s a rescue” brigade) or from an anthropomorphised canine perspective.
The ingenuity at play here delivers pure joy. Puppetry, surreal crowd work and ambitiously creative use of a loop pedal combine in an eccentric hour that couldn’t possibly come from anywhere else. You almost don’t notice some of the darkness that peeps out.
Although this lovely show isn’t overtly about taking stock of life, Jones briefly mentions the recent onset of stammers and tics – possibly Tourette’s – and plays with the ways in which he has learnt to adapt them. While another comic might talk us through how these changes make him feel, Jones seems instead to be pointing at what’s going on in his busy mind.
The ultimate message is that we should all be a bit more like dogs – though not necessarily in the way you’d expect. It’s refreshing, chaotic fun.
People go to clown school to get their egos destroyed; Bilal Zafar killed his when he got a day job, he jokes.
Rubicon, the title of his show, refers to a brand that was a key feature of his childhood. It occurred to him recently – while conducting a silly prank on Harrods, involving inquiries about a stupidly expensive vase – that the drink might be a marker of class. He uses this as a jumping off point to consider social differences, one fun gauge being whether you enjoy seeing people “kicking off”.
There are several different elements to this fun show – a departure from Zafar’s usual storytelling format. Having garnered a passionately adoring fanbase on social media in recent years, he drops a few references that make an already delighted contingent even happier, but he also provides some self-effacing evidence of an acting career that’s not going quite as well as hoped. Not yet, anyway.
An interlude about a mention of Zafar and “Edinburgh’s joyless festival of wokery” in a publication called The Conservative Woman will stay with you, as will his gag about what you get for your three-year wedding anniversary.
Thoroughly likeable and in possession of an easygoing demeanour, Zafar is an entertaining presence, and the school kids he’s helping should consider themselves lucky.
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