Rob Mulholland / Paul McDaniel / Stephanie Laing - Bobby Carroll's Fringe Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Thursday 15th August 2024

The legend is that Rob Mulholland started comedy on a whim after seeing a flyer at a festival and giving it a try. He quickly electrified the circuit with his no nonsense, very intelligent punchiness. But, like your Phil Ellises, Carl Donnellys or Rob Kemps, though he has had Fringe successes over previous years, they are not the kind that the homogenous TV and arts centre cabal of the comedy industry know how to convert into anything beyond a 'come down' in September. Luckily, he has tapped into the rebel podcast / livestream revival where 'blokey acts bantering' rules the roost. Mulholland's Dead Men Talking Pod, in particular, has seen him and Freddy Quinne successfully give guest spots to adult video stars and play share-worthy pranks on the Grand National. They have built up a loyal fanbase who have minimal idea of what the Pleasance Courtyard even is and couldn't name the current sponsor of the Perrier award even if they and their mates accidently won it on a particularly quirky stag-do in the capital city.

Mulholland now finds himself independent of the festival corporate back offices treadmill and probably will play to fewer people over these sell out 26 days in August than came to see him and his mates muck about at their own festival in a field a month earlier; Dead Meet. Festival full circle.

Mulholland's latest show, Allegations, clearly feels untethered from any needs to show pony in front of the critics and industry liggers. This one is for the fans. Yet, rather than being self-indulgent, it might just be his most flawless show yet. He has nailed a shimmering gold trim on the back wall of his cavern. He is wearing a dickie bow and a velvet tuxedo. Every sentence sees his body swivel back and forth, this way and that, lanky legs kicking jokes left and right, like a glitching Bruce Forsyth. Let Mulholland entertain you. His cheery Yorkshire burr is all jolly incredulity as he spouts nasty takes and controversial ironies.

Mulholland powers through his edgy subjects with a percussive rhythm. His thoughts on day drinking gets the beer heavy outsiders on board. There are beautiful lines about the very British concepts of "Pre-drinks" and the "Tactical Chunder". Given the show's title there was no way he was going to avoid the latest celebrity paedophiles but his bent on the tired topic is cheeky, revealing and biographical. (Don't worry he has not got Short Eyes and he doesn't reveal any childhood trauma.) The final ten minutes of debauchery where he tries to be feminist through a tirade of filth probably gives some uncomfortable mixed messages to the lads, but they lap it up. Don't try this at home, kids! Alcohol free and utterly shameless, Rob Mulholland just be fire. A man-and-mic comedian at the peak of his powers.

Lou Taylor was a nineties teen. Her spoken word 'museum of childhood' is all reminiscences over Dream Phone, Live & Kicking and Nokia 3310s. Listing a decade's specific things for mere recognition chuckles was something Pat Monahan made his stock in trade a few Fringes ago. Living nostalgia sells tickets and Taylor's memories are as pure and accessible as an I Love The Nineties talking head. Remember that? Imagine Stuart Maconie in jeans and a nice top. The title of the show is Jeans and a Nice Top but is jeans and a nice top a specifically Nineties fashion combo? The show is so 'my era'-centric I waited patiently for material on saucy More magazine's position of the fortnight and the launch night of Channel 5....

Taylor shifts up a gear when she plays us her TikTok skits. Period product ads and teen park hook-ups are lampooned on screen to big laughs. The hour takes a few lunges away from pure stand-up after these energisers and is all the funnier for it. The callbacks start to bed in with the audience and suddenly all that teenage total recall begins to feel like long game set-up rather than blunt writing. Speaking of a lack of bluntness... her fingering story is particularly good.

Taylor even finds some Saturday morning kids TV footage to close the story with that feels traumatising to modern eyes. Yet it also harks back to a more optimistic time when the young team were expected to absorb hard news between their phone-in interview segments and toy schilling cartoons. As a calling card for Taylor, her mainstream instincts and mass market appeal is evidenced in abundance. Maybe she could host a Friday night SM:TV reboot?

If you want to catch Aussie oddball Dan Rath's attention better, wear sparkly kneepads. He doesn't do eye contact as such, more scopes out the dead zone between the front row's shoes and knees. Despite this limitation, possibly affected, he actually commits to a fair amount of crowdwork. Which, given the zoned out targeting, actually creates some happenstance humour. Often, two or three punters feel they are being spoken to. It might seem like he is struggling in these awkward back-n-forths yet the withering self-assessment that comes after each dead end interaction is so ornate that it has to be calculated. Has to be.

Not that the grumpy faces that dominated one side of the room were ever in on the trick. They sat there confused and seething, like they'd ordered a pizza and someone had instead shat in their gaping idiot mouths. A full room on weekend night, many flyered after a balmy evening of beer garden drinking, some visibly felt left out. Diddums. They clearly thought this Rath joker didn't know what he was doing. Those of us who had done a smidge more due diligence and actually booked a ticket for something we wanted to see, on the other hand, had a stop-start blast in the sticky atmosphere of begrudging confusion.

Defined by his neurodivergent diagnosis, and maybe medicated to the hilt, Rath's style is akin to a depressive Mitch Hedberg or a perpetually confused Todd Barry. Hyper intelligent tidbits, informed by a skewed logic, filtered through an isolated awkwardness. This is not comedy that flows. It laps at you like waves. Sometimes a glorious swell of big surf hits you like his observations on vending machines. Ride it wet. Other times it feels like low tide and only individuals in the room recognise his loner genius. Surely we can all agree that we love deciding to have a secret McDonald's and that has been programmed into our cranial sponges. Fewer punters understood why Uber Eats deserves a good hacking... a few dozen times.

Rath isn't for everyone but I enjoyed what chimed with me, sometimes only me, thoroughly. And when you caught someone else chuckling at one that lost you, you still felt kindred to that brave spirit. Solo communal. For discerning pariahs only.

Last year Paul McDaniel dished up some delicious deadpan and soup. This year he has got a full pan of butterbeans on the burner. The show is frequently punctuated by the purposefully unassuming entertainer hearing them bubbling away, interrupting his own comedy flow and checking in on those butterbeans. He warns us there might be a metaphor in his creuset pot somewhere.

I am awfully fond of McDaniel's spoken word subversions. His straight material constantly undermines himself, and he has built up quite a bulletproof sad sack persona to fit his beautiful little sighs of humour. After the first ten minutes, Butterbeans feels like a considered swerve away from that lo-fi whimsy. McDaniel utilises increasingly tricky AV clips and cons as the show progresses. All but letting go of his natural strengths and instincts. It is an experiment, but one that pays off exponentially as we near the climax. The Fringe should be about growth and ambition. His sophomore hour embraces that ethos. McDaniel goes electric (oven hob).

What starts out as goofy visuals of his cute nemesis of a cat and an uncannily quirky audition tape spirals away and curls back in on itself over the show. McDaniel satirises life on social media, isolation, the silence of rejection and the creep of AI into our interactions, even his cat's. How seriously should we take these? He always undercuts the paranoia and insincerity of each online conversation with some of his trademark humour.

Some recent and childhood memories are turfed up; these hint at darker edges. As someone who knew they were going to have to write about all this later I was second guessing whether our destination was a real trauma that would emerge to be mined. Or, given McDaniel's previous form as an anti-comedian, was this all a clever spoof of such a show? Regular citizens won't have this issue but I sometimes wasn't fully engaging with Butterbeans as comedy as I was trying to out-think the other level within it. The danger of composing your evaluation while watching is that you end up distracted, trying to be a smart arse. Fair to say, McDaniel's ultimate reveal bamboozled me just as much as the uninitiated.

How exciting to see an already fascinating emerging comedian push themselves towards a massive formal evolution this early in their career. McDaniel's mixture of comic styles do dovetail and it builds to a neat and hilarious crescendo. Does it have an ultimate point? Well, I'll just need to check in on those butterbeans again and then I'll let you know! Chef's kiss.

Speaking of acts who are crossing boundaries, pushing themselves into a new shape and transforming the stand-up genre into a brave fresh form, we have Stephanie Laing's Rudder. Laing has always been a very accessible, capable comedian and here she blends her newly trained skill in modern dance with her day job as a funny person. There are a lot of divergent strands contained within. Some hard hitting confessional revelations, some cheery linking segments where she introduces her next dance set piece with the ribald, appealing mode of talking that makes her an imminently bookable performer. She is also loved up and her hunky fiancé is in the audience this particular afternoon! Aw!

The deeper message of her ambitious show is to represent body autonomy. Mission accomplished. Even in her most bruising tales she is the master of herself. Graceful control of her body, mature understanding of her mind and emotions. There is a warm satisfaction catching a look of pride and contentment on Laing's face as she nails a Martha Graham tribute or serenely showcases her belly dance. You'll be whooping and clapping. She's got the moves. The gentle humour does scrape against the more emotional content but this is a risky experiment worthy of attention.

For example: At times I feel like a lunkhead when listening to comedy with a feminist lean. I try to be open to new ideas and better behaviour but being a cis straight man my mind does often have knee jerk kickback. Yet Laing is a canny enough communicator that her points about who feminine sexiness is for cut through all my old thinking and testosterone-fuelled ignorance. Laing could have had a very successful Fringe just relying on her Rik Mayall-esque patter and frenetic sweetness. Instead, she has pushed herself with this exciting, if random, new alternative to straight man-and-mic.