Edinburgh Fringe Comedy reviews: Garry Starr: Classic Penguins | Seymour F*cking Mace You C*nts! | Kathleen Hughes: Cryptid! | Melanie Bracewell: Attack of the Melanie Bracewell | Brennan Reece: Me Me Me

All mouth and no trousers takes on a whole new meaning in Garry Starr’s latest brilliant clown show, leading our latest batch of Fringe comedy reviews. Words by Claire Smith, Jay Richardson and Kate Copstick

Garry Starr in Classic Penguins | Dylan Woodley

COMEDY

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins ★★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 26 August

This is a show about literature – particularly Penguin classic paperbacks – which are lined up in a bookcase at the front of the stage. It also features Garry Starr, a very funny man who is peculiarly averse to wearing trousers.

Here Starr takes nakedness, clowning and audience participation to new and audacious heights. Adopting the persona of the Penguin trademark, with top hat and orange flippers, Starr creates a series of sketches based on classic book titles. It’s ingenious, fast-moving and very funny and brings a series of volunteers into awkward proximity with Starr, who is, as they say, letting it all hang out.

His new penguin persona is slightly grotesque, with an arrogant air and a ludicrous pronunciation of words such as “lit er at tuuuure”. He also wears a ruff, which is a constant for Starr, who before he became a clown was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Starr’s willingness to expose his body on stage is without limits. And it’s curious how willing people – mostly other men – are to join him on stage. One of my favourite bits of the show is where he brings on a couple of audience members for a hug. It’s sweet and tender, and it allows two men who are strangers to be affectionate to one another in public. It’s funny and genuinely moving at the same time.

It is a show packed full of ideas and absolutely stuffed with surprises. The audience is howling with laughter and disbelief as one glorious setup follows another. Starr’s naked vulnerability is his strength. The indignity of it all, coupled with his earnest demeanour, makes him ridiculous, but it also renders him innocent. It makes him one of us. Claire Smith

COMEDY

Seymour F*cking Mace You C*nts! ★★★★

The Stand Comedy Club 2 (Venue 5) until 25 August

There’s something about Seymour Mace that makes me laugh: deep down, all-the-way-to-the-diaphragm laughter, complete with snorts and wheezes. It’s partly the swearing. Mace, as you might guess from the title of his show, is one of the world’s greatest users of the swear word to comic effect. I’m not talking about the way posh comics drop a cheeky little swear at the end of a sentence. I’m talking about all non-stop, poetic, rhythmic, joyful swearing. He’s also an artist, who creates signs, fake adverts, cartoons, sculptures and puppets which all become an integral part of some very funny jokes.

In the past Mace has spoken about his mental health problems and how comedy and art are the only thing that makes him happy. But now, at the age of 55, and suddenly on the right medication, he’s happy. He does look different. He’s got a sort of vitality about him. But for those of you still struggling with the tortured artist concept, never fear. He’s as imaginative, as creative, as off the wall and as anti-establishment as ever. In fact he can’t stop making things.

This show includes a talking body part, a quiz on Bible knowledge and a terrifically cute miniature outside privy. There’s a brilliant bit on how much he hates regional rivalry, that nonsensical assertion that people in one part of a country are better than any other.

At one point he offers a mini workshop on swearing, showing various audience members how to introduce random swear words into a Q&A session in a way guaranteed to get a laugh. Not all of them get it right. “I make it look easy,” he says. He’s not wrong. He does. Claire Smith

COMEDY

Kathleen Hughes: Cryptid! ★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Snug) (Venue 24) until 26 August

One of the bright new hopes of Scottish comedy, Kathleen Hughes eschews a straightforward introduction in her fine Fringe debut to really prod and probe at the knottier aspects of her identity. Dressed in a white lab coat, she frames the hour with a B-movie-informed trawl through mythical creatures – Nessie, Bigfoot, et al – a preoccupation from her childhood that has filled in some of the God-shaped hole in her lapsed Catholicism. But it turns out that most mysterious creature of all is the bisexual, once treated like a figment of the imagination but now running wild all over the festival and beyond.

Having belatedly arrived at her sexuality, Hughes is now in a solid relationship with a man, but with feelings that she might have missed out on other experiences somewhere along the line. Moreover, while the Glaswegian is still grappling with her own shaky sense of self, she's cursed with one of those approachable faces, doomed to be forever emotionally unloaded onto by less empathetic people. Cynically, sardonically funny, Hughes nevertheless seems more concerned with getting to the core of herself than pandering to a crowd. And her harder, flintier edges give her a slightly spiky aspect that is compelling rather than off-putting. Jay Richardson

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COMEDY

Melanie Bracewell: Attack of the Melanie Bracewell ★★★

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

Evoking Liam Neeson's iconic revenge speech from the film Taken, Melanie Bracewell's Fringe debut is a gently serpentine hour of storytelling, driven by vendetta. Though warmly conversational, the tall Kiwi knows she can intimidate some. In the room though, with her ready self-deprecation, it's a gossamer-thin act, her jailbird boyfriend's time in the slammer actually the briefest of stays for the most embarrassingly minor of offences.

Melanie Bracewell | Contributed

Regardless, comics who have a show to write love a caper. And when Bracewell's AirPods are stolen, the wonders of modern technology allow her to track the movements of the thief on her phone. She builds a profile and messages him, trying to guilt him into returning them. Level-headed enough to know her preoccupation isn't worth the AirPods’s monetary value and that her behaviour borders on cyber-stalking, she's nevertheless confronted with reminders of the incident almost daily. Eventually, she cracks. And with the bullish comic Urzila Carlson in tow, their height disparity affording them classic detective double-act contrast and some decidedly wonky camera footage, the pair set out to confront the criminal directly. 

Throughout her tale, the affable Bracewell capably balances the core narrative with an introduction to her gawkily engaging self. And while there's little sense of peril, there are just enough twists and turns to keep the show compelling. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Brennan Reece: Me Me Me ★★★

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Liquid Room Annexe/Warehouse (Venue 276) until 25 August

There is a definite hint of Alan Carr's straight younger brother on speed about Brennan Reece. He chucks jokes around like beanbags at a coconut shy and most of them hit. He is much too frenetically jolly to be having a serious go at anyone or anything. But, once the pointless and unimaginative crowdwork is out the way, we cannot help but see a theme developing. 

His hour has more rampantly homosexual content than Rentboy of the Year. And I am unsure why. His other obsession is with finding out what he said to get himself fired from CBBC. This is a clever way to allow him to riff through some of the “worst” jokes he has supposedly made over the years.

We get the geometry of threesomes, gay Jesus, Harry Potter vs the Bible and his dead grandmother. Reece is appalled that he might have made a joke that upset someone so much, given his belief that jokes exist to bring people together. He has a story about Jimmy Savile, one about a bipolar teacher and – yes – he finally does discover the joke that was so bad it got him fired from CBBC. But he can tell you that one himself. Kate Copstick