2011 Edinburgh Fringe
Simon Donald review
Former Viz man Donald may have made his name with a fantastically crude brand of humour but his innuendo comes broadsheet-approved tonight. The biggest laughers in the Stand 2 are the Guardian columnist Martin Kelner and fellow Stand performer Bridget Christie - Mrs Stewart Lee - who corpses so raucously at Donald's opening section that you fear she may do herself a mischief.
It is by far the strongest bit of the show, in truth, as the strip-writer turned character-comic gives full rein to his fertile way with a filthy word and comes up with a great bubbling stream of them, in the guise of a hapless market researcher who borrows Donald's audience to fill out a survey about STDs and single motherhood. You half-hope that rather captivating character will helm the whole show, in fact, but he then drops the hat and reverts to real Simon Donald mode, whereupon everything becomes a lot patchier.
This is a slightly curious show, as anecdotes about Donald's life are interspersed with an array of characters, who generally just pop up irrespective of what he was talking about. They're a mixed bag, from the witty to the wearisome, but Donald often seems more relaxed with his various hats on than in his own skin. Where the characters are tightly scripted, his own - often very entertaining - anecdotes are awash with stumbles and hesitations, and he has a distracting habit of fiercely rubbing his face when reverting back to Donald mode, as if he's just taken off a Scooby Doo-like mask.
The Dirty Great Fringepiece is a disjointed affair, but Viz fans could do much worse with their eight quids. And if you buy a copy of Donald's autobiography after, he'll draw a picture of Sid the Sexist telling you to **** off.
Simon Donald's Dirty Great Fringepiece listing
