Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Riki Lindhome: Dead Inside | Dan Tiernan: Stomp | Michael Porter + more

Riki Lindhome: Dead Inside | Elisabeth Caren

Riki Lindhome: Dead Inside ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (venue 33) until 25 August

Best known as half of American comedy folk duo Garfunkel and Oates, who specialise in pleasingly filthy viral songs, Emmy-nominated Riki Lindhome has chosen Edinburgh to premiere her new solo show – a fiercely personal story of her ‘fertility journey’ to motherhood.

Opening with the nuts and bolts of egg freezing and IVF, the tale takes in a variety of attempts to start a family, including ‘natural’ pregnancy, surrogacy and adoption. It’s a set that’s as interesting as it is funny; with tragedy, disappointment and heartbreak offering ample shade amidst the lightness of her comic touch.

There’s righteous indignation here too, adding further texture. “We don’t talk about this stuff”, she protests, bemoaning how women’s reproductive health has so often taken a back seat in the advancement of medicine. It never feels too heavy though, with a joke never more than a minute away.

The narrative is punctuated by a series of sublime comic songs. Too often in less expert hands musical comedy can feel like long, if tuneful, setups to single punchlines, but that’s certainly not the case here.

The first number, examining the practicalities of sex beyond the first flush of youth, lands a laugh on every second line. It’s a hit rate that continues throughout – the highlight being a song cautioning showbiz kids to resist the urge to Google their parents.

Even in the musical interludes Lindhome isn’t afraid to take a step back from the comic, a song dedicated to a baby that she never got the chance to meet adding poignancy without ever threatening to stray into mawkishness.

So confident and focused is the performer in her subject matter that there’s remarkably little in the way of flab, a song about the baffling plot of The Sound of Music being the only section that veers away from the main, fascinating, topic.

David Hepburn

Dan Tiernan: Stomp ★★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (venue 515) until 25 August

An hour in Dan Tiernan’s company is exhilarating, occasionally tense and shocking, and consistently extremely funny.

He blazed into the capital last year, easily earning a best newcomer nomination at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for an explosive show, Going Under, in which he talked about being gay (people don’t always believe him), having dyspraxia (that one’s easier to accept) and his experiences at a school for children with special needs. He was unlike anyone we’d had on our comedy stages.

His sophomore show, Stomp, is no less thrilling. A high-energy affair punctuated by bouts of shouting at someone in the front row (something one wouldn’t normally tolerate, but which here feels somehow part of a package).

We have no choice but to go along with his jokes against himself – he’s completely in control of this room and has spent a lifetime owning his difference. For example, he says he looks like he does because his mother’s also dyspraxic and he got dropped a lot (it’s not the only gag about genetic inheritance) and jokes that he looks like he’s either really good at maths – or really bad at maths

In the new show he talks about having gout, experiencing drug-induced psychosis and some other self-destructive behaviour that started when he was quite young.

There isn’t an ounce of visible vulnerability, though – it’s more a case of him showing, rather than telling, the absurdity of aspects of his existence. It’s all an uncompromising expression of self from a funny, funny man.

He opens with a strong gimmick, and ends with something your rude little brother might do. In the brief moments when his material feels slightly conventional, you almost don’t notice, thanks to the uniqueness of his delivery, the unusual verbal emphases and the ballsy ownership of who he is.

Ashley Davies

Michael Porter – Love and Brain Damage ★★★

Just the Tonic Nucleus (Just the Sub-Atomic Room) (Venue 393) until 25 August

At the risk of being seen to discriminate against Michael Porter for the four stars he jokes are his right, on account of the trauma he's suffered, this is a bracing show from the Edinburgh-based Northern Irishman.

The harsh aspects of his tale are that he was involved in a horrific road accident as a child, technically died three times while receiving treatment, and has suffered permanent frontal lobe damage. Having moved to Scotland a decade ago, he's fathered a child that he's trying to reconnect with, been consistently stalked by a woman he still fears and has struggled to retain a job or relationship.

Strangers and bar staff often perceive his brain damage as drunkenness, inhibiting his social life and leading to recriminations.

So Love and Brain Damage is seldom an easy watch. Speaking garrulously fast, Porter is anxious to banish the gap of empathy between him and his crowd, entreating them to engage with his unfortunate story. His routines range from a winning account of his indomitable mother, not backing down in her refusal to accept second-rate care for her son, to a frankly alarming snapshot of a date with another damaged person, where you can't ever really be sure where it's going.

The likeable Porter is candid to a fault and if some of his gags are familiar, he certainly understands the more dramatic chapters in his biography, relating them with an infectious urgency.

Jay Richardson

Al Lubel Me, My Mother and I ★★

Liquid Rooms (Venue 276) until 25 August

Al Lubel is reliably and wonderfully weird in an increasingly anodyne TV-centric comedy world. Here he channels his equally weird, over protective smother-mother and introduces his father and Grandmother.

Very quickly it becomes obvious why Al is weird. He traps us in unexpected snares of “but what if ?” thinking, so be careful, this is catching.

His opening comedy rabbit hole takes this right to the limit before we are off exploring narcissism, the woman inside him, pissing in the street and the problems of late puberty. We also get Shakespeare (brilliant ) and Elvis (dreadful). He is like no one else.

Kate Copstick

The Thermos Museum ★★

Satyr Bar (Venue 337) until 25 August

Fans of anti-comedy are in for a treat.

Not all of us are committed enough to stay awake until 1.50am to watch Mark Dean Quinn eat cheese but here, in one of the most delightful venues in Edinburgh, you can spend an unmitigatedly downbeat hour (tbh 45 minutes plus time to get stuff out of cupboards) in a dedicatedly joke free zone. Also, fans of the vacuum flask should know, a thermos free one.

This is an experience, an escape into a whole different kind of comedy. Fans of doors and the television repair industry will be thrilled. Grab it while you can.

Kate Copstick

Natasha Pearl Hansen: The Right Amount of Wrong ★★★

Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire (Just the Liberty Room) (Venue 338) until 25 August

Opening with a debasing account of losing control of her bowels, the outwardly composed Natasha Pearl Hansen is an exceptionally candid, assured storytelling comic.

The American has rationalised her somewhat rollercoaster life, the dubious romantic entanglements, the drink, drugs and generally risky behaviour, into a self-affirming philosophy: that she's experienced just the right amount of wrong to entertain.

Although she's frequently rushed in where angels fear to tread, her tale of flying to the Czech Republic to get involved in a shady bit of business that she didn't comprehend, a single young woman bouncing between groups of random men being a case in point, she's wise after the fact.

Jilted before her wedding, she kept the day to shoot a stand-up special and invited guests to buy her sympathy presents, an experience she subsequently turned into a business.

A free spirit, she doesn't find time with her family easy. But in her eccentric, outspoken grandmother, there's a sense that the acorn hasn't fallen too far from the tree. And that impression is cemented when she reveals the remarkable tale of her family lineage, borne out of conventional social stigma, yet embraced for her to thrive.

The hour loses momentum whenever Hansen departs from the personal stories for more workaday observational material, but this is still an impressive Fringe debut.

Jay Richardson