Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Katie Norris | Joe Kent-Walters | Sallyann Fellowes

Find your next source of laughs in our fresh round of Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews.

Katie Norris in Farm Fatale | Katie Norris

Katie Norris: Farm Fatale

Pleasance Courtyard (Below) (Venue 33), until 25 August

★★★★

Once of darkly twisted double act Norris and Parker, Katie Norris' first solo show has been bubbling away in the cauldron of development for a few years now and is well worth the wait. Weaving a demented love story of sorts through exquisitely varied and uproariously funny songs, flippant personal anecdotes flecked with flashes of sincere self-reveal and some sublime character comedy, it's a wonderfully packaged introduction to her talents.

Raised in rural Somerset, Norris' agricultural background doesn't feature much beyond the titular opening number, though perhaps explains her' closeness to one particular animal and affected blasé about death. Yet the tune itself is a cracker, an epic evocation of her as a woman of a certain age, on the prowl for divorced dads, her sexual rapaciousness expressed with a spellbinding witchiness.

If that's the initial pose struck though, she quickly qualifies the succubus vibe by bringing to life her affable 25-year-old flatmate, whose ingenue innocence and considerate care Norris detains with a dusty, dowager's reminisce about her youthful sexual indiscretions. A lovely dynamic, it's matched by the one she has with her fearsome Russian cat-sitter, whose inexplicable, chillingly cold behaviour Norris finds giddily thrilling.

Notwithstanding her eye for disappointing, pretentious men, and an obsessive regard for comedian James Acaster that she shares with some of them, her closest relationship is with her cat, Atticus. Presented like an enchantress' familiar, inspiring Norris' anguish of hissing, feline threat, and with a physical bond with the comic that's much, much too close, he becomes the centre of a tug-of-war love triangle with one of Norris' neighbours, a nemesis for her to bare her fangs at.

This driving descent into madness affords Farm Fatale real energy and sense of climax. Yet throughout, the wit and panache with which Norris delivers her songs, the poise she displays with her expressive comic physicality, well, it's a sublime, witch's brew of ingredients for a first-rate debut.

Jay Richardson

Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!!

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Monkey Barrel 2) (Venue 515), until 25 August

★★★★

Despite the act's evident debt to the likes of The Mighty Boosh and The League Of Gentlemen, Joe Kent-Walters' creation Frankie Monroe is a singular, diabolically funny late-night festival escape. Gravel-voiced, his face smeared in Sudocrem, Monroe is the owner and MC of The Misty Moon working men's club in Rotherham, preserved in its old-fashioned, Northern variety posterity thanks to a Faustian deal he casually struck 24 years ago with a shadowy entity known as The Committee. Think Phoenix Nights set in an adjunct to Hell that time otherwise forgot.

With his lustily-delivered songs, creaky magic tricks, twisted gags and grotesque ventriloquist's dummy, his creepy interaction with the crowd encapsulated in the satisfied refrain “Good Boy!”, Monroe is a throwback showbusiness hack to his core and never as intimidating as he looks. The touchingly crap limits of his talent and Kent-Walters' glint in his eye at the silliness of the conceit and its occasional failures are built into the show.

As befits a variety line-up, Frankie is occasionally replaced by other characters on stage, such as his nephew Brandy or an equally alarming Johnny Cash tribute act. However, the question of whether they're distinct creations or merely manifestations of Frankie's troubled imagination brought scarcely alive with rudimentary costumes is left deliciously vague.

The fully roundedness and versatility of Frankie is a major boon, with Kent-Walters adept at riding the wave of whatever the crowd gives him or doesn't give him in the moment. However, his marks are generally keen to try to deliver what he wants, such is the counter-intuitively exclusive feel of being in The Misty Moon on this wretched evening. It certainly feels as if the world hasn't heard the last of Frankie Monroe.

Jay Richardson

Sallyann Fellowes: SALIEN

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Daisy) (Venue 302), until 25 August

★★★

When being the niece of notorious train robber Ronnie Biggs is one of the least interesting things about someone, you know they've got a multi-faceted personality. Autistic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, with ADHD, a lazy eye and a bit of brain damage, being conventional doesn't appear to have been an option for Sallyann Fellowes.

A proto-comedian in school, who's only now pursuing that path in middle-age, she's utterly embracing her distinctiveness, arriving on stage with extra-terrestrial-inspired headgear. Accepted to RADA, she couldn't afford to go. But after belatedly coming out as bisexual, she reacted to a horrible homophobic attack by becoming a police detective, retaining the observational skills, if not the job as she ultimately fell foul of her superiors.

Clashes with authority have been a constant throughout her life and continue in therapy, her lack of neurotypicality causing constant misunderstandings and friction. But it's a boon for her quirky, anecdotal style, as she jumps from non-sequitur to non-sequitur, only the loose chronology of her life affording SALIEN a semblance of structure.

There are times when you'd wish she'd relate a story more deeply, probe what it means to her more fully. But if her default mode is dry cynicism, she's capricious in where she takes a tale. And you wouldn't want to hone too many of the rough edges that make her an invigorating new voice.

Jay Richardson

Maeve Press: Failure Confetti

Assembly George Square Studios (Studio Four) (Venue 17), until 25 August

★★★

Cursed with an almost preternaturally elfin appearance that still confuses people as to whether she's an adult or a child, arrested development is at the heart of Maeve Press' elusive but appealing Fringe debut. Small, contained and avowedly angst-ridden but clearly sharply intelligent and with some exceptionally dark, self-lacerating quips about herself, it comes as quite the surprise to hear just how much the American comic has been defined as backward and lacking in intellectual growth since birth.

Placed in special education assessment for 17 years, she's now got a box of her medical files from that period. Sharing some of the unsparing analysis of herself, she has the distance to be wince-inducingly wry about her lack of attainment and the cold, clinical perceptions of her, in stark contrast with the footage she shares of her commanding a comedy club stage as a teenager, even if her material is on the nose.

The now 21-year-old's temporal proximity to that time make her vulnerability almost overwhelming. Yet she cheerily kicks against it. Widening her insecurities to encompass grief, her tremulous sexuality and her performing urge, Press' is a deeply affecting tale, which, despite her puckish humour, retains an underlying sadness and ongoing mystery that she can't really answer. How was someone who is now so seemingly capable so blithely dismissed and left to psychologically fend for themselves?

Jay Richardson

Of Course You Are, We All Are

PBH's Free Fringe @ Leith Arches (Venue 324), until 24 August

★★

This is a parable, wrapped in a folktale, loosely accessorised as comedy, performed by a softly spoken, intense young man. In retrospect, the tale is engaging, structured by character, as each takes the narrative further in his or her own weird way. Because they all are weird.

The challenge is that we are confused at the start by the style of the 'comedy' and several 'chapters' in before we understand what is happening. By then it is too late to laugh, even if there had been anything to laugh at. Comedy cannot rely on hindsight. But as storytelling this is lovely.

Kate Copstick