Olga Koch, Kiri Pritchard McLean, Stamptown, Harriet Kemsley - Mark Muldoon's Fringe Diary

Written by: Mark Muldoon
Published: Friday 9th August 2024

Okay, I need to tell you about my two favourite shows of the year so far. But would you like a quick story first?

Newcomer Hannah Platt has a fun anti-pregnancy joke in her show. It's fair to say it's not for her personally. But she's feeling bad about doing it today, saying to a woman in the front row "thank you for being here. As soon as you walked in I was like 'is that a pregnant woman and I'm going to do that joke?... You are pregnant, aren't you?' The woman responds: 'no'.

Cue a room full of huge gasps and ten minutes of utter mortification from Platt. 'Well I'm never going to speak out loud ever again'. It entirely derails the show. To be fair, it also makes it: Platt handles her own disaster well, and everybody involved is able to see the funny side.

As a bit of old-fashioned sitcom-esque chaos, it's quite the moment. But she's presumably got a new story to add into the show for the rest of the run. Which will help it along: she's got a lot of promise, great character and energy, but the joke-writing isn't fully there for me yet. It felt merely solid for 40 minutes, before really kicking into gear for a great final 20. One to keep an eye on, then.

Right, very exciting to bring you this news of my two favourite shows of the year so far: Olga Koch and Kiri Pritchard-McLean.

Olga Koch needs to be recognised as one of the best we have. Every year she brings a brilliant show to this festival, just a no-fat flex through a consistent hour of big laughs. This year she's unpacking the fact that she very much comes from a wealthy family, which works neatly as a theme for a show in 2024. The overarching approach is to lean into it - able to open a section by saying with a wry smile "so the thing about being on a yacht is...". This is only actually slightly better than her previous shows, but that just reflects the run of form she's maintaining here.

If you're at the festival, you've actually already missed your chance to see Kiri Pritchard-McLean, as she's only done three shows whilst stopping off on her nationwide tour. It concerns the long story of her and her partner's attempts to become foster parents. Many comedians take on weighty subjects in their shows, but Kiri gives a masterclass in the simple mechanics of how to do it: with great humour all the way through. She's not precious either, recounting how "a massive thing putting me off being a mum is... seeing mums" and laughing about parents she knows. The whole thing doubles as a heartfelt advert for fostering, an area of the societal framework which Kiri makes clear is generally struggling in the UK, under increasing demand and decreasing supply. Amongst a skilled body of work, this is her best show yet.

Kiri is also an off-stage fourth member of the Fringe's finest sketch group Tarot, who are a consistently reliable presence. There's a bit of Derren Brown-esque playfulness at the end of this year's show (one of them, Adam Drake, does have a bit of a Derren Brown-vibe to him). This year's show supposedly uses a variety of devices to randomise the selection of sketches. I'm not personally a fan of such approaches (just give me the best 60 minutes you've got!), but the extent to which the choices are actually randomised here is up for debate, and anyway, they're all killer, no filler. I'm not convinced they land the very closing moments of the show, but otherwise, another fine addition to the canon. They're touring it in autumn.

Quite something to witness Stamptown rise up to play the Pleasance Grand, one of the biggest rooms at the Fringe. Their raucous absolutely-anything-goes variety shows were previously the best night out in town, but it'll take a lot of fine tuning to make the whole thing work in this space: the show starts 45 minutes late (which is about four hours in Fringe Time) and is 30 minutes longer than billed. Physical jokes that worked brilliantly in a 250-person room don't translate nearly as successfully here. The supporting lineup doesn't feel like it's been adequately scaled-up either. All of which is fixable, and there's ample moments to still enjoy within the show itself, not least Zach Zucker's frantic central turn as his alter-ego Jack Tucker. You hope they iron things out for the rest of the run.

The following lunchtime, Stamptown mainstay Josh Glanc is back on stage for his own solo sketch show. There was only one problem with his show the last time he had an hour of all-new material at the Fringe (in 2022), which was one of pacing, so it's a pleasure to be able to say that he's sped things up this time around. It's also been responsible for my loudest laugh of the Fringe so far. Overall, a silly, joyful treat.

We're in Best Show Yet territory with Harriet Kemsley, who - to be fair - has had an eventful year. She's now divorced and facing single life again. Her delivery is frantic and rapid-fire: all the more impressive that the quality of the material stays impressively high throughout. The show is only in town until the 12th, so you'll need to rush to get a ticket (or it tours throughout autumn).

Steen Raskopoulos is an audience-participation comedian, so there's similarities here both with the remarkable quick wit of Nina Conti (available elsewhere at the same venue) and the full-throated commitment to the form you get from Adam Riches' best work, although I'd maybe be a little more keen to recommend either of them over Steen's hour, which isn't to say you won't enjoy what's on offer here. There's a great blink-and-you'll-miss-it Shania Twain joke, and a standalone set piece based around the playground game 'Simon Says' is an enormously fun highlight.

Amongst this year's other newcomers is Sarah Roberts, whose show is centred around double jaw surgery - maybe not the most gripping topic for an hour's live comedy, but it does pay off quite nicely at the end. The show tends to coast along as perhaps only mildly amusing, though two standout stories - concerning diarrhoea and fingering - are excellent high points, and she handles a playful late night audience well, which is a promising sign.

Finally, someone else who's becoming an Extremely Reliable Fringe Presence. This year's Amy Matthews show discusses presenting as typically middle class when actually coming from a classic working class background, though the real high points actually concern a yawn on the London Underground (!), and some extremely fun deconstruction of a bit of online trolling. If there's any justice, 2024 will be a big year for her.

Read previous editions of this column (featuring Fawlty Towers: The Play, Ed Gamble, Sarah Keyworth, Phil Wang and Jessica Fostekew).

Mark Muldoon is also available on Instagram and Twitter. His coffee consumption is sky-rocketing and his sleep quantity is plummeting, but he's having a very nice time.