Edinburgh Comedy Award nominees, Ania Magliano, Ivo Graham's Comedian DJ Battles - Mark Muldoon's Fringe Diary

Written by: Mark Muldoon
Published: Thursday 22nd August 2024

Naturally discussions since yesterday afternoon have focused on the nominees being announced for this year's Edinburgh Comedy Awards. The list wasn't without its surprises: the biggest shock being Olga Koch's omission: Comes from Money is a career-best effort from a comedian who tends to ensure every show she writes would be worthy of nominating on a list like this.

It's also a little surprising to see Demi Adejuyigbe only nominated for Best Newcomer, for a show that would have been good enough to win the overall Best Show award. Beyond that, I really liked - but wouldn't quite have nominated - Sarah Keyworth or Catherine Bohart, though there's every chance both their shows have come along nicely since their London runs earlier in the year. Amy Gledhill's 2024 show, meanwhile, isn't as strong as her 2022 debut. That may leave Natalie Palamides - perhaps this year's most critically-adored show - as the frontrunner for Saturday's ceremony. Full nominations here.

Ania Magliano may also be feeling a little left out, having been nominated in 2023, and returned with a show even better this year. She's enjoying the kind of sustained year-on-year Fringe success that makes her future stardom seem pretty much guaranteed. Following a lovely opening ten minutes, she's off into this third Edinburgh outing, discussing how her coil is coming along, or the overly-aggressive nature of her vibrator. It's a rock solid performance. She's also funny at the one moment where the professionalism could've been endangered: the lights accidentally, briefly, go out. She majors in #relatable comedy for her younger-female target audience, though she still pulls off the trick of ensuring everyone will enjoy themselves.

"I like looking disabled" says Dan Tiernan, back for his second hour this year. It's a classic Tiernan line.

The final few minutes of the show is fantastic, and the way Tiernan ties up the overarching joke of the show by using his 'bucket speech' request for donations at the end is masterful. At other points the show isn't quite the phenomenal introduction last year's debut was - for example, there's a pre-show sequence that, as ideas go, has more promise than it actually delivers - but if you've not seen him before, consider this show a must-see - Tiernan has a remarkable comic persona you need to get to know.

"This is what concussion looks like in real time", says Dan Rath, which is a pretty good description of what it's like to witness his stream-of-consciousness shows. Both him and Tiernan are fantastic adverts for the benefits of having neurodiverse people in comedy (Rath states he's autistic and bipolar), as it's a unique pleasure to witness his mind at work for an hour, as he pinballs around various topics. His suggestion for how to gain some benefits from writing your suicide note is pitch-black but has a deliciously sensible logic to it. You sense - more than most comedians - that he benefits from having a decent-sized, easygoing audience in, and that some nights may be going better than others as a result. Rath needs to become a bigger name, so he takes flight at every show.

Intriguing to witness Garrett Millerick tackle a singular grand theme for this year's show: space travel, and the history thereof. It works for him - he brings his own, skilled perspective to the topic, though along the way there's still time to take in some of his trademark arguing against received liberal opinion, such as his reasoning for why Britain is still screwed under a Labour government, and questioning whether we are in fact living in 'unprecedented times', Or why nationalising the railways won't work as a method of improving them. Dependable as ever, then.

If the jokes in Sam Lake's show this year can sometimes be a bit low-hanging-fruit, they're also commonly good, clever fun - a joke we'll name 'Cornwall' is an early highlight, and his New York Times puzzle conceit works a treat. There's an emotional heart to the show, as he pays tribute to his mother and celebrates happiness in the face of what essentially sounds like internalised homophobia. I properly welled-up, I just would've liked it if I'd also been laughing a bit more.

"Super-extroverted" NYC-based comic Molly Brenner has finally returned to the Fringe after a fine showing in 2019. Who wouldn't enjoy her attempts to find enlightenment at a yoga retreat, where the pressure to do so just ends up making her feel stressed (she decides to just reach out to her ketamine dealer instead). Elsewhere, she asks a single audience member to rate the dating scene in their town and is unable to spin comedy magic when the response is surprisingly positive. That's somewhat representative of a show with strong stories and a range of quality punchlines, but a performer not yet coming across as fully fluid and at ease on stage. Some of it may have been opening night roughness - it's possible the show has bedded down nicely by now.

Kemah Bob details how she's a typical Pisces: emotional, sensitive, a little bit psychic. Her show largely takes the form of one long piece of storytelling, following her attempts to commune with other Black people whilst on a trip to Thailand. Which is a story that really works, full of laughter, narrative drama and energetic, compelling storytelling. It's not giving too much away to say that she expected other countries to be less racist, but it turns out they can actually be more racist. Not every punchline quite hits home, but loads do. Throughout the show you notice just how much money Kemah is spending, which, in certain senses, pays off well at the end of the show.

The early signs in Virtuoso aren't great - performer Casey Filips takes a drink of an audience member's pint (like we haven't seen anybody do that before), and the punchlines are often on the patchy side. Things do settle down though, into a well-pitched satire of thespian pretentiousness. You wonder how good this show could have been if Filips had collaborated with a skilled jokesmith - whilst this isn't a show for one-liner fans, there's a multitude of quality comic ideas here that make him worth keeping an eye on.

Let's end things in da club. Ivo Graham's Comedians' DJ Battles is a pretty Ronseal-esque title for a night out, where, indeed, teams of comedians battle each other, picking songs and hyping up the audience. Nish Kumar and David O'Doherty play Kendrick Lamar and goof around on stage. Vittorio Angelone and Mike Rice cue up Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, followed by Oom-Pah-Pah from the Oliver! soundtrack. By far the most actually-determined to win, Chloe Petts and Huge Davies play Icona Pop, Blink 182, Natasha Bedingfield then The Killers, before launching into a full take over of the dancefloor in order to rightfully claim victory.

Ivo DJs before midnight and after 1:30am, and also provides commentary throughout the evening via PowerPoint, on an upstage screen. All pretty ideal Fringe fun, then, save for the fact that this particular venue's low ceiling means that many of the audience aren't able to read the on-screen commentary, particularly shorter audience members. It's a shame, as much of the night's comedy and charm derive from these on-screen antics. Add a couple more screens around the venue, and this could be a top-tier annual addition to the Fringe.

Read previous editions of this column (featuring Fawlty Towers: The Play, Ivo Graham's comedy show, Reuben Kaye, Olga Koch and Kiri Pritchard-McLean).

Mark Muldoon is also available on Instagram and Twitter. He'll throw praise in the direction of any DJ that spins Icona Pop.