Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Lara Ricote | Jason Byrne | Andrew Maxwell | Tom Little

Find your way to a collection of Edinburgh Fringe comedy shows you don’t want to miss, where guaranteed laughs abound.

Lara Ricote in Little Tiny Wet Show (Baptism) | Wesley Verhoeve

Lara Ricote: Little Tiny Wet Show (Baptism)

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515), until 25 August

★★★★

Lara Ricote is an instinctively weird young woman who’s quite unlike anyone else you’ll encounter in the world of comedy. There’s a childlike goofiness to her, made all the more appealing by her unusual voice, which, she acknowledges, makes her sound like she’s wearing a brace.

She describes herself as hard of hearing (she went into detail about this in her debut 2022 show, GRL/LATNX/DEF, which won her the best newcomer gong in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards); her confident opening rendition of The Beatles’ Let It Be, replete with lyrics whose consonants at least resemble the original, is one of her fun and idiosyncratic ways of owning this.

On stage in a white robe the Mexican/Venezuelan/American who lives in the Netherlands finds fresh ways to talk about her relationship. Her boyfriend moved from Argentina to Holland a few years ago to be with her, but she’s hardly ever there because of her job. Tricky.

It’s also her first adult relationship, so she’s still learning how it’s all done, and was in couples therapy by the age of 25. She jokes about how her mind wanders during moments of intimacy, and how specific bedroom acts make her feel, and what she’s really asking is what it takes to make a relationship work. Is it compatibility? Or does it lie more in the act of choosing the person and the life?

She doesn’t reveal too much about the psychology – it’s not that kind of show – but does say her therapist puts most things down to her having grown up in a house with beads instead of doors. It’s gloriously vivid.

Ricote’s got some low-risk elements of audience participation (a daft way of naming us as a group), and her expressions of absurdism, what’s under her robe, in particular, contribute to this being a delightful hour from an adorable talent. Viva the weird kids.

Ashley Davies

Jason Byrne: NO SHOW

Assembly Hall (Venue 35), until 25 August

★★★★

Going to see a Jason Byrne show is something people do with their friends, their families, their workmates.  He is such a festival staple people return year after year. Byrne is such a master of crowd manipulation that he’s decided to come to Edinburgh with no show whatsoever – challenging himself to create the laughs out of the people and situations he finds in the room.

He’s 52 now, but Byrne is still capable of wheeling around the stage, doing a one man impression of an entire fairground full of rides. Every show will be different.  So on the night I was there, Byrne had tremendous fun with a Welsh man called Will, who was with his mum, and an Italian called Giuseppe who was with his Scottish girlfriend.  There was also a man called Keith, with giant hands, who initially seemed reluctant to take part but ended up becoming the centrepiece of the gloriously upbeat finale.

Byrne is a giant man-child but he knows these festival crowds inside out. He can always pull up a bit of relevant material, toying with sectarian rivalries, teasing out class differences and even riffing on teenage masturbation to the delight and horror of a sixteen-year-old in the front row. The comic can tune in to the tiniest grunt, or the odd word from an audience member and tease out an entire backstory for the person involved.  It may not be accurate, but it’s always hilarious.

He may need to slow down.  At one point during the fairground scene he was clutching his chest.  But Jason Byrne always gives his all.  And the crowd adores him for it. The final scene, with Guiseppe, Will and Keith dancing with Jason Byrne on stage was a sheer delight.  Even the ushers were dancing in the aisles.

Claire Smith

Andrew Maxwell: The Bare Maximum

Just the Tonic Nucleus (Venue 393), until 25 August

★★★★

Andrew Maxwell is taking it easy – well, actually he isn’t. After 30 years on the comedy circuit, touring internationally, making TV programmes and radio he’s decided to give up. Except he hasn’t. 

Maxwell hit 50 this year, and although he’s enjoying his early evening slot he is by no means resting on his laurels. It’s just that he has done enough to know exactly what he’s doing.  He’s no longer chasing the big showbiz dream, but he is as fast and as quick witted as ever, just a bit more relaxed.

Maxwell tells beautifully crafted stories, stuffed full of jokes.  He hops effortlessly in and out of other people’s mannerisms, becoming an Essex thug, an Australian racist and an open minded Irish pensioner without batting an eyelid. 

He gives us a well informed sweep through the last 100 years of history, takes some irreverent swipes at ignorance and intolerance, and delivers some choice observations about the peculiarities of Ireland and its people.

Things are getting better, seems to be the general drift.  Despite pockets of hatred people are fundamentally good. The world is becoming more like the Edinburgh Fringe – open to everyone, bursting with freedom of expression. 

It’s not a political statement, it’s a state of mind. And Maxwell, while he is as full of glee and mischief as ever, has adopted an attitude of zen. He doesn’t make any big fancy statements.  He doesn’t push any theories.  He carries on doing what he does best, laughing at the closed-minded people and celebrating the great diversity of humanity.

In his own way, Maxwell has cracked the code – don’t get riled by the eejits of the world, just laugh at them, and for goodness sake just enjoy the luxury of being in a room full of people free to celebrate the absurdity of existence.

Claire Smith

Tom Little: Show Me Some Bloody Respect

Liquid Rooms (Venue 276), until 24 August

★★★★

Can someone actually speak faster than the speed of sound? If anyone can, Tom Little can.

Even if his audiences were paying Fringe Box Office amounts, on a per-word basis, his delivery would make it a bargain. He addresses his quite extraordinary speed of speech in the first part of the show. It is nothing, he reassures us, to do with nervousness, before explaining he is Cumbrian, hurtling us down a comedy (Peter) rabbit hole and surprising Wordsworth fans with revelations about the great man's Cumberland Sausage.

Little has a characteristic comedy technique which he has made his own. He will accuse us, his audience, of making some sort of assumptions about him. He then goes about refuting those nonexistent assumptions using increasingly extreme examples. It is clever.

Tom’s comedy amp' definitely goes all the way up to 11 and escalation is a tool he uses to perfection. A story about his problematic landlord in Birmingham suddenly accelerates via an explanation of the comedy concept of 'punching up' and becomes a hilarious pseudo tirade about 'paedos'.

Tom worries about peanut classification, and frets that he doesn't have anything witty to say when someone leaves to go to the toilet, but we are too busy enjoying hearing of his love for museums and worries about his failing face to care. Yes, museums, Tom has seen them all. Well, except the Vagina Museum. And Tom's thoughts about our thoughts about Tom in a Vagina Museum are another crazy comedy … er … rabbit hole that he gallops us down.

If anything ever happens to chill Tom out and slow him down it might be terribly good for his blood pressure, but it would be a disaster for his comedy. Pay attention, keep up, this is funny stuff.

Kate Copstick