Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Hannah Platt: Defence Mechanism | Simon Munnery | Ben Miller: Volcano + more

Hannah Platt: Defence MechanismHannah Platt: Defence Mechanism
Hannah Platt: Defence Mechanism | Nicola Grimshaw-Mitchell
Our latest batch of comedy reviews includes a brutally candid and funny Fringe debut, a perfectly crafted hour from a cult comedy legend, and a first-rate joke writer with a bleak sensibility

Hannah Platt: Defence Mechanism ★★★★

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

Unsparing in its candour yet often brutally funny, Hannah Platt's Fringe debut is a supremely accomplished example of how to reconstitute deep, personal trauma into punchy, affecting stand-up, a solid primer on mental health issues that's entertaining above all else.

Chief among the Scouse comic's problems is the body dysmorphia that has plagued her since her youth, manifesting itself in a tricky outcome for a stand-up, in that she's forever thinking other people are laughing at her. On occasion, she's right too, as she shares a relatable account of getting intimidated on public transport by someone with no comprehension of their impact.

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On stage is Platt surer of herself, her arresting introduction conveying the idea of someone who knows themselves almost too well and is riddled with self-doubt.

Through the cack-handed, insensitive perspective of men she's dated, she eases into the explanation of how she now considers herself non-binary. Having known she was queer from an early age, she nevertheless resisted this aspect of her identity because of an intersectional snare of further issues – her working-class, emotion-suppressing background; a tense relationship with her happy-go-lucky mother and a grief that's cost her full insight into her neurodivergence.

Platt is restlessly shuffling a substantial deck of troubles but capably relates them with vivid, assured storytelling. So effortlessly are they shared in fact, that when she really hit rock bottom, what's striking is not the extremity of her thoughts, the cold, inverted logic that misguidedly set out to put a friend's well-being ahead of her own, but how recently it happened.

How can someone so seemingly in control on stage be spiralling so hard off it? One would hope that the acclaim she'll undoubtedly attract for this memorable hour will help sustain her. Yet she swerves too many pat conclusions about where her mind is now and Defence Mechanism bracingly ends with only qualified resolution.

Jay Richardson

Simon Munnery ★★★★

The Stand Comedy Club (Venue 5) until 25 August

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You do not reach the kind of legendary comedy status achieved by Simon Munnery without very good reason. Munnery could pretty much be any kind of comic he wanted to be and, over the years, he has been everything from Alan Parker Urban Warrior to The League Against Tedium. In Show and Tell, his audience is treated to every kind of comic.

He scatters his hour with pin-sharp, leftfield observations, dives into his trademark little meta moments, offers a better than decent Michael Caine impression, gets physical with some experimentation into seeing sound, and musical (I use the word loosely) as he serenades us with a Dylanesque song (Bob, not Thomas).

Simon kicks back and regales us with showbiz memories of meeting a Hollywood legend backstage while a national treasure died upfront at a festival gig. He morphs from gently bewildered to frustratedly analytical and from convoluted anecdotary to the kind of perfectly crafted one liners that are a visceral thrill for your laughing bits.

From tea sachets to the Proclaimers to dead Germans, no one writes like Munnery. His work is like a comedy seed bank for so many comics that came after him. I apologise for that sentence, there is no way of writing it that doesn't sound like a massive double entendre, but you know what I mean.

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There is not a single moment in one of his shows where you can guess where a line is going, so every laugh is a surprise. Talking of surprises, just when we think that the hour cannot get better, we are introduced to the lovely Tazzie (not particularly talented, but absolutely gorgeous) and what may be the most eye wateringly wicked joke about women ever written.

Kate Copstick

Katie Green: ¡Ay Mija! ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand) (Venue 33) until 25 August

Despite her anglophone name, Katie Green has strong Latina roots. And in her breezily enjoyable Fringe debut, the stand-up tries to reconcile various aspects of her bicultural background, covering plenty of cultural ground but remaining personable and relatable throughout.

Growing up in California, with English and Salvadorean parents, her father wasn't around and she was a Catholic late bloomer, relentlessly bullied at school. Having enjoyed a glow up since, she can afford to be cheerily self-deprecating about her dorky childhood self.

But having not had a quinceañera at 15, the coming-of-age celebration for Latina girls, she craved the increasingly popular doble version when she hit 30, recognising the moments that have brought her to where she is today.

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Though genuinely a big event in her life, it serves as a useful focus for the show, which cements her status as an insider-outsider, never fully part of whichever culture she's in but making acute observations all the while.

Having come out of a long-term relationship, that's principally via the culture clash expectations of sex and dating she experiences in London, with any exotic cachet she might enjoy somewhat undermined by her Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Disarmingly frank and a little clownishly goofy, you appreciate Green's celebration of self.

Jay Richardson

If You Laugh More the Show Will Get Better ★★★

Carbon (Room 1) (Venue 180) until 25 August

As his passive-aggressive show title suggests, Ed Mulvey isn't blessed with obvious warmth. And if he's not feeling enough appreciation from the crowd, he lets them know by degrees of belligerence. What he is however, is a first-rate joke writer with a bleak sensibility, prizing the craft above their comfort.

Risking opprobrium for routines about the limits of feminism, anti-Semitism and porn, with a striking number of gags about paedophilia in the modern day, it's nevertheless worth the gamble if you value exquisite layering of jokes upon jokes.

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He can playfully evoke a superb threesome scenario that escalates bizarrely in its combinations. But he never seems self-consciously edgy. Rather, Mulvey appears preoccupied experimenting with the internal logic of his routines, suggesting he may have autism and barely cares if you laugh or not.

His bright, open venue isn't great for putting anyone at ease. And true to form, he abandoned the show early the day I saw it, clearly not taken with the vibe. That's a pity, as he clearly possesses rare ability. And you intuit that with the right conditions or a modicum of flexibility, he could really make a name for himself.

Jay Richardson

Ben Miller: Volcano ★★★

Just the Tonic at The Caves (Just Up The Stairs) (Venue 88) until 25 August

Not the famous British sketch comic, actor and physics graduate Ben Miller, though he has waggishly exploited the confusion, New Yorker Ben Miller's debut is firmly in the geekier strata of professional vocations turned into Fringe stand-up.

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Last year the erstwhile scientist spent a month as artist in residence at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, discovering all manner of facts about geology and lava, which he then turned into a comedic presentation for an afternoon gathering of pensioners, a testing hour for all involved apparently.

Although the science remains paramount in this show and the rather stiff, gangly Miller is not a natural entertainer, he's a winningly shy, engaging nerd, enthusiastic at times, drolly reflective at others. His beta male energy means that jokes about masturbation and what not, when they do come, gain a bit of extra reaction. And who doesn't want to hear about onanism in Pompeii?

An account of the Hawaiian deities attributed to the islands' topography feels like padding culled directly from Wikipedia. And the volcano experience is stretched a little thinly over the hour generally, when he probably ought to share more about himself, and how he came to be in Hawaii.

Still, for fans of shows like QI, this is an interesting, amusing insight into a dynamic aspect of the natural world.

Jay Richardson

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