Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy reviews: Lindsey Santoro | Paddy Young | Seymour Mace | Alphabet Soup | Dominique Salerno

Lindsey Santoro’s raucous sexual humour marks her out as a talent to watch, says Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Lindsey Santoro: Pink Tinge ****

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), until 27 August

Birmingham-based comedian Lindsey Santoro

Ribald is the most sophisticated description I can think of to summarise Lindsey Santoro, a latter-day Wife of Bath sharing the tub with her husband and revealing in intimate, fleshy detail the docking manoeuvres of their amorous, splashy gymnastics. If the stereotype for a male comedian's club set has long been 20 minutes of dick jokes, how refreshing to hear almost an hour of unapologetic fanny chat, broken off from only temporarily to introduce the Brummie comic's devilish, made-up game of “Bumhole Surprise”.

Notwithstanding her exotic surname, a gift from her spouse in an otherwise vaguely feminist hour, Santoro projects a seemingly affectation-free, take-me-as-I-am attitude. She doesn't gently coax the audience into the tale of her cervical smear test but pitches them in headlong. The candid nature of the anecdote is what grabs your attention. But as with most of her material, it's the vivid detail, memorable imagery and ebullient delivery that makes the routine.

Plenty of the gags are gratuitously bawdy or visceral, written specifically to upset Santoro's mother in one instance. But there's an overwhelming relatability in the comic's portrait of a loving, sexually active marriage that has nevertheless lost some of its romantic spark, with universal appeal in her depiction of two people settling for affectionate, defeated slobbishness. Moreover, when Santoro reveals that she recently gave birth, the baby is treated as almost incidental to her identity, with the process of labour celebrated for the free legal drugs that the comic was able to score.

An account of a raucous hen-do almost verges into self-parody but Santoro is watchful enough to add a few creative twists that help her supplement the stereotype of drunken, middle-aged women. With great confidence, wit and mischief to match, it's surely only a matter of time before she becomes a television fixture.

Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Paddy Young: Hungry, Horny, Scared ****

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 27 August

Given the transgressive hilarity of his depiction of Hitler with a hangover, the Pleasance missed a trick by not hosting Paddy Young's debut in one of their bunker venues. Yet a lowly, converted shipping container also seems appropriate for this existential howl of angst from Generation Rent. A patronised northerner seeking fame and fortune in that there London, he describes levels of deprivation house-sharing in the metropolis that border on the Dickensian. A Scarborough native, destined never to be the most famous performing son in his town after Thor the walrus stole hearts and headlines there earlier this year, he's an anxiety-riddled, looming breakdown of a man with a bedwetter history and almost permanent rictus grin, who's not above stoking the north-south divide, pitching the deprived youth against comfortable boomers, or those with conventional jobs against jugglers.

Playing status games, chippily resentful of his crowd but desperately imploring them to laugh, Young lays on the despair pretty thick. Still, there's some robust, clear-sighted satire in his dancing northern monkey act. Sending up the self-serving stereotype of the salt-of-the-earth Yorkshireman, he flails at those living both sides of the Watford Gap, property-owning or simply aspiring.

Throughout, he also displays some solid comic acting chops, whether inhabiting the character of the world's most famous fascist on a comedown, or embodying the working-class northern cliches of British cinema. As a stand-up, he's nimble at ad-libbing around audience reactions, the smugness and guilt. And he has a clutch of great observational material, not least on the sudden preoccupation of men of a certain age with World War II non-fiction. Surely destined for greater things than sharing a spatula with 50 or so others, acclaim and recognition may or may not suit Young. But the ease with which he plays Hitler suggests that he's more than ready to try lording it for a while.

Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Seymour Mace does Drawing ****

Stand Two (venue 5) until 27 August

Seymour Mace has been back to college to get a fine art degree (he got a First). He was a hit with the students, who thought his life as a stand-up must be cool, and with the tutors, who loved his existential cartoons. Now he returns to the Fringe with a portfolio of pictures, which are all, also, very good jokes.Mace handles the heaviest of subjects with the lightest of touches, managing to make some profound, moving and provocative observations while also making us howl with laughter. He takes aim at some sacred cows – the art establishment, the craft of stand up, the operation of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. Even Fringe royalty Phoebe Waller Bridge gets taken down, with a suitably graphic depiction of her largesse towards emerging artists.It might sound dark, but it really isn’t. Mace is on brilliant, life-affirming form, imbuing all his thoughts with irrepressible mischievous childish joy. The Show and Tell format suits him perfectly, allowing him to share the darkest of thoughts in the most playful fashion. He satirises modern fashions in mental health, rages against the economic realities of the Fringe and demolishes religious ideology, all the while showing us delightful cartoons of ducks, shoes, fishes and babies.Mace is simultaneously vulnerable and fearless, serious and relentlessly idiotic. It’s a brilliant balancing act which allows the audience to float on air, laughing like children at some truly twisted leaps of the imagination.He’s been moving for years towards a truly Dada-ist style of stand up – and this year it has all come together. This is an utterly delightful show – clever, rebellious, absurd and gloriously gloriously silly. It will leave you beaming for joy as you walk away from the venue and back into the world.Claire Smith

COMEDY

Alphabet Soup **

Le Monde (venue 47) until 28 August

US LGBTQIA+ comedy is here, out and proudly taking their place on the Fringe menu. The show is an hour and a half (+) of comedy by the people, for the people across the spectrum of gender identity. The soup pot, stirred, with endearing hyper-energy, by 7G and Alyssa Poteet, could do with a lot more fresh laughs, although things will doubtless perk up when everyone stops explaining how jet-lagged they are. You are in the comedy section, my lovelies. It is wonderful, but not enough, just to be here and be queer. Be funny. Guest spots come from The Hairy Godmothers (highlight of the show, but that is not saying much) and 'Princess Diana' in the presence of whose performance I feel myself lose the will to live. Luckily, I am enjoying a fabulous brunch which comes along with the VIP tickets (great idea). This is a first show, and 7G is delightful. I like to end on a high note.

Kate Copstick

COMEDY

Dominique Salerno: The Box Show ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), until 27 August

Though it's possibly labouring the metaphor to say that Dominique Salerno is thinking both inside and outside the box with her UK debut, the New Yorker performs this ticklishly enchanting, one-woman sketch show entirely from within the confines of a cramped cupboard. I had my doubts following a none-too-memorable mime to the Mission Impossible theme and Greek heroes squabbling as they passed time in the Trojan Horse. But I warmed to the variety and possibilities of the format as the hour progressed. A frame for self-expression or a cage for entrapment, an ocean seabed or even a human womb, the box evokes pathos, jokingly as a letter with a priceless stamp fatally wings its way to its final destiny, or genuinely, when it's the restrictive horizons for a giantess shunned by her community. There's slapstick and clever prop arrangement in a Dirty Dancing-inspired flirtation. Best of all are Frida Kahlo agonising over her unsmiling self-portrait; a punkish, feminist pop star incorporating her luckless producer into her protest record; a sibilant diamond ring bigging up its gifter, and an intimate part of the female anatomy, smug in its Bond villain-style lair but destined to be bested. More than just a gimmick, The Box Show is charming testimony to the invention possible from imposing theatrical limits.

Jay Richardson