Silent disco tours, Reuben Kaye, Jordan Brookes, Emma Sidi - Mark Muldoon's Fringe Diary

Written by: Mark Muldoon
Published: Tuesday 13th August 2024

Okay, a few days ago I told you about my two favourite shows of 2024 so far. I've now got two more to disclose. But first, something that's... surprisingly unrelated to comedy.

Every August, an influx of silent disco walking tours invade the streets of Edinburgh. They certainly have their haters, and have long been a bit of an in-joke pet peeve for many a Fringe regular. Singing, dancing and clapping along to pop hits, these groups stalk the busiest streets in the city, come rain or shine.

That last bit has its significance, as I'd decided it was time to find out what it's actually like to go on one. Imagine how I feel, though, when, shortly before the tour started, I emerge from my preceding show and realise to quite what extent rain is chucking it down outside.

It seems as though the weather has put a fair few people off, as only nine show up for this, Guru Dudu's Silent Disco Walking Tour - me and eight women - all seemingly extroverts, save for one permanently mortified-looking introverted teenager.

The formula makes sense from a business perspective: singing and dancing makes you feel happy (that's why religions often favour it). The busiest streets, meanwhile, are chosen for a reason: the louder we clap and sing, the more publicity the tour gets.

But if you're wondering if there's anything else to the tour, there isn't. Just singing and silly dancing around the busiest areas of the Fringe, and substantial musical overlap with the hen party I was at a few weeks earlier. Passersby either smile at us, laugh at us, or pity us. We occasionally flashmob shops, and I spend most of the time praying nobody I know sees me.

I expected the host to have a bit more of a 'Friday Night at Butlins' energy to him, or - given how many years he's been running these tours - maybe have thought of more than one actual joke (it was about viagra, and wasn't good) to tell throughout the course of the whole thing. All of which means that, whilst it's unquestionably an intelligent business model, it makes for a pretty thin experience for your £17.

Right, I've got two new god-tier favourite shows of 2024 to tell you about. Step up, Demi Adejuyigbe and Lou Wall.

Operating within multimedia, straddling PowerPoint comedy and musical comedy subgenres, Demi Adejuyigbe's show burns with a fierce flame of creative ingenuity, regularly daft, but supremely well crafted. He rewrites We Didn't Start The Fire - fair play, some distance from being an original idea - but the execution lands somewhere you'd never guess he'd take it. It's just one remarkable moment in a show packed with them. There's astonishing (vocal) cameo appearances from certain very well-known public figures, astonishing even before you consider that Adejuyigbe undermines one particularly major guest by sharply criticising him afterwards. The only segment of the show that isn't fully brilliant concerns a monkey on wheels driving around the venue floor. It's that kind of show. In short, one of the all time great Fringe performances. A masterpiece.

Whilst we're discussing masterpieces/all time great Fringe shows, let's chat about Lou Wall. The Bisexual's Lament was nominated for Best Show at Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which is a bit like being nominated for a Golden Globe. Consider it alright as an early indicator.

It's no exaggeration to say that 2023 was, on so many levels, an extremely bad year for Lou. If there was any temptation to allow such traumas to dominate the show, Lou instead allows these truly horrific experiences to rightfully take up space, but then dispenses with them in what, for me, is pleasingly skilled comic terms. More lighthearted recollections sandwich them, balancing the show and keeping the audience unable to ever predict the direction they're taking us in. The pace is so frantic you find yourself forgiving the only odd inclusion: pretty well known viral clips that are unconnected to Lou's life. The show is destined to divide opinion, but there's just so much show here, plus some of the biggest laughs in town. It's difficult not to be dazzled.

Nice to have previous Edinburgh champ Jordan Brookes back, and more-so, witnessing what he does when he's got a bit of a budget behind him. His idea this year is to twist the Titanic film off in a different direction. You'd be surprised at how much Titanic material there is at the Fringe this year (these massive 25ish year-old cultural moments presumably being perfect comedy fodder, considering the strong majority of the target audience that will remember them). Truth be told, these segments don't actually make up the highlights of the show, and you find yourself willing him to get back to the classic Brookes act of knockabout playful fun with the audience (including, when I saw it, excellent bants with a high-profile reviewer also in attendance).

Nerve-racking times for the Anna Mann superfans amongst us. Her creator, Colin Hoult, is for the first time performing a show as himself. Telling his own stories from working class life in Nottingham, alongside fish-out-of-water ruminations on having married "posh". And great stories they are too, though later in proceedings material does decline into 'kids say the funniest things' humour, which maybe isn't the strongest mode of comedy out there. But the show is studded with the same A* audience interactions that have made previous shows highlights of the Fringe. Turns out there's more overlap between Anna Mann and Colin Hoult than we expected.

Over on the cabaret side of the Fringe, Reuben Kaye is impressing large audiences with quality songs, glorious audience interactions and prepared routines that are... individually good. There's well-polished lines about politicians - the Nigel Farage one being particularly good - whilst other sections concern Kaye settling personal scores. Merch is given a pretty heavy push at the end of the show. There's also four pronouns-based jokes throughout the performance, further limiting the range of material on offer. Just one would've hit the comedy sweet spot. Drag has long concerned itself with social politics, of course, and you always strongly agree with Kaye on every issue he brings to the table, but taken collectively they do overburden the show.

Finally, there's not many people at the Fringe basing their show on an hour of character comedy on Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff, Sue Gray. That's what upcoming Taskmaster star Emma Sidi has done, but have no fear: this isn't one for the politics dweebs only. Sidi portrays Gray as a wild gal, with a slight anti-woke edge, snorting cocaine with Rylan and distracted by visits to the sweets aisle of TK Maxx when she should be at COBRA meetings. She describes Keir Starmer as "dripping with rizz". The occasional segment feels too drawn out, not least extended sections delivered in Spanish. They're funny, but their prominence is the only thing stopping this daft-but-ingenious show being a classic.

Read previous editions of this column (featuring Fawlty Towers: The Play, Ivo Graham, Chloe Petts, Olga Koch and Kiri Pritchard-McLean).

Mark Muldoon is also available on Instagram and Twitter. Every year this column also gives an award to the best pre-show music of the Fringe (2023: Celya AB. 2022: Lauren Pattison). Thanks to this banging pairing, Lou Wall takes the prize in 2024.