Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Ania Magliano: Forgive Me Father | Paddy Young | Mary Bourke + more

Ania Magliano: Forgive Me Father | Ania Magliano

Ania Magliano: Forgive Me Father ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

Ania Magliano has taken a huge step.  She’s moved in with her lovely boyfriend - the first time she’s lived with someone.  And it’s going quite well.

But this being an Ania Magliano show, there is more to this.  While living with the boyfriend is the big life change at play, there are other narratives, woven beautifully into the story.

Moving in with someone coincides with a niggling gynaecological issue - so the tale is interwoven with trips to the doctor.  It’s graphic and the anxiety is real, but delivered with a deftly refreshingly light touch.

There’s also the question of what happened with her mum and dad.  As Magliano moves on to a new stage of grown up life, she starts to ask questions about her parent’s divorce.

And although she doesn’t labour any of it, there is also the issue of commitment.  Magliano is bisexual, but still maintains her ‘she’ pronoun.  Can she really be happy to align herself permanently to one other person?

Magliano is effortlessly funny, with a knack of finding delightful absurdity in situations and states of mind.  Her show is packed full of big genuine laughs as she ambushes the audience again and again with her fresh, surprising and playful perspective on life.

We hang on her every word as she takes us with us to her home, to doctor’s appointments and back in time, to interrogate tiny three year old Anna Magliano about what is really going on in her world.

This is a show that will make you laugh, make you think and make you fall in love with Ania Magliano a little bit, even if you aren’t already.  We are in safe hands with this thoroughly likeable performer and as a result the world becomes a safer, funnier and more optimistic place. 

Claire Smith

Paddy Young: If I Told You I’d Have to Kiss You ★★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515) until 23 August

In his newcomer-nominated show last year Paddy Young played on his loser status.  This year things are looking up, but he’s still making himself the butt of all the jokes.

Young lives in London now.  He’s a thirty-something comic who’s been on television, and he’s adopted an unconvincing lounge lizard leer as he cultivates an air of sophistication.

This is a show about yearning for love, whether it be frustrating encounters in the school playground, out of reach older women, or casually absurd exchanges with the girls on the Babestation channel.

While he might wish he could be a great lover, Young is haunted by niggling adolescent insecurities - about penis size, pube density and missed opportunities for romance.

And really the most important relationship of his life is with his flatmate. They go to the gym together, watch television standing up and bond over cheese snacks and computer games.

Young gets a lot of mileage out of being slighted, ignored and overlooked.  In the audience tonight there are lots of other performers - and when he finds out some have been in television and even film, he twists like a pretzel in an agony of self-loathing.

He’s sending himself up to the max but actually he has a tremendous amount of confidence and sophistication on stage.  The laugh per minute ratio is as high as they come - and he reels out one perfectly written gag after another.

He even tries out the fashion for talking about mental health in comedy, before shrugging with exaggerated boredom and moving on.

There’s absolutely nothing serious about this show.  And I mean that in the best possible way.  Paddy Young is bursting with energy and talent, and has the audience screaming with laughter until the end.

Claire Smith

Mary Bourke: Three Irish Headliners ★★★

The Stand Comedy Club (Venue 5) until 25 August

When one of the headliners is Mary Bourke, you can be sure that the show is always going to be worth going to.

Today we are MC'd by genial Northern Irish boy Reece Kidd, who made this Paisley girl feel immediately at home by kicking off his banter with the front row with “So, would you be Catholic or Protestant?”.

First up is Roger O'Sullivan who loves true crime podcasts, has persuasive views on terrorist group top trumps from a musical point of view and believes that the Irish invented time. He will make you think.

Edward Tripp, Anti Poetry Slam Champion and (from what we could see) firebug is utterly unexpectable. Two Uncle Connors and a truly novel way with Bizet and his Toreadors made his set very moreish.

Mary Bourke is, as ever, a joy to watch. Although maybe 'joy' is not really the term. And she has quite the way with words, does our Mary. I'll never think of her vagina the same way again.

Elsewhere, Liz Truss, incels, the life of a carer and drunken Irish nurses are poached in her Irish vitriol and we get to enjoy. It is an hour pretty packed with laughs.

Kate Copstick

Metroland Live: The Box ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Attic) (Venue 33) until 26 August

At a frequently pretentious arts festival like the Edinburgh Fringe, five lads from the North-East of England performing sketches about piss and Pot Noodles feels positively exotic, a rare dash of brazenly blokeish daftness.

Their titular box is a Space Raiders pack said to contain the secret of comedy, prominent for one skit. But in truth it could refer to their sweatbox venue, made doubly so by them opening with Caden Elliot's committed dance instructor leading the crowd through a series of pelvic thrusts.

Contrastingly, John Dole has an impressively impassive face. And he delivers the aforementioned Pot Noodle cooking instruction video with amusingly straight sincerity, before taking centrestage for a custard pie daubing contest in which the five try to make each other crack with improvised lines. Though going on a bit, this cheeky indulgence, breaking out from the artifice of a show in a straightforward effort to simply make themselves and the crowd snort is refreshing.

Knockabout scally charm only carries them so far however. And Jack Robertson as the personified smell of urine undergoing an existential crisis offers a bit of pathos, wry chuckles and shows some ambition with the form.

Metroland's online success shines through in the swagger of their act. But they can certainly cut it live.

Jay Richardson

Erin Farrington – Think Better: Manifesting Money, Real Estate and Hot People ★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) (Venue 33) until 25 August

The solo debut of Stamptown regular Erin Farrington, Think Better is a spoof self-help seminar about manifesting success that's big on improvisation but otherwise short on substance.

The American is pleasant company, leading her crowd through mantras, Tarot readings and visualisation exercises. And there are unquestionably moments of relaxation. But the entitled, self-satisfied persona is neither sufficiently heightened or subtle enough to have any greater impact, comedic or otherwise.

This sort of new age parody has been done better and with considerably more effort countless times before at the festival.

Jay Richardson