Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Reviews: Jin Hao Li | Tom Ballard | Nate Kitch | Whore's Eye View

Pleasance Courtyard (Below) (Venue 33) until 25 August

****

Born in China, with a stint in the Singaporean army, Jin Hao Li makes his Fringe debut after studying English Literature at St Andrews.

Those biographical waypoints notwithstanding, this surreally bravura, laudably ambitious and at times mesmeric performance takes place almost exclusively in the dream and nightmarescape of his imagination, the boundaries between these and reality blurred consistently to vivid comic effect.

He draws you in with his soft, measured voice, which, ever-so-occasionally, he impishly discards with recourse to horror movie-style shocks and the knowingly coarse, misogynistic poetics of rap. That he finds whimsical joy in the violent code of Japanese gangsters the yakuza affords just a solitary example of why you can never hope to guess where one of his flights of fantasy will land.

Imagining himself transmogrified, Kafkaesque, into the body of a spider, a pilot fish or a plastic bag, he projects himself into otherwise relatable pursuits like flirtation or trying to find friendship, struggling entertainingly against the confines of the universes he's trapped himself in.

Rapping the “apple a day” rhyme with empathy for both the doctor and apple, his thoughts are suffused with tenderness for the marginalised and misunderstood. Even an incident of racism that sounds as if it might have some actual place in his past is reconstituted into a Harold and Maude-style, cross-generational romance.

For all his default calm charisma and gentle, gnomic nuggets of enigmatic philosophy, there's still a showiness to Swimming In a Submarine of a comic simply bursting to show you everything he's capable of. Regardless, his absolute control, the way he plays the audience like an instrument, with a seemingly endless variation of tone and mannerism, style and set-piece is wonderfully compelling.

Densely multi-layered but executed with verve and lightness of touch, as funny idiosyncratic as it is in provoking laughter, this highly singular introduction comes just as highly recommended.

Jay Richardson

Tom Ballard: Good Point Well Made

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Monkey Barrel 2) (Venue 515) until 25 August

****

Very much a companion piece to his 2023 show, Good Point Well Made finds Tom Ballard still railing at the state of the planet, sniping at Rupert Murdoch and flexing his impeccable socialist credentials with recourse to his Aboriginal, circus performer boyfriend.

Emphasising his punchlines and agitated distemper with yelling, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it's irretrievably broken, that is to say, the world, well, the Australian still finds much to amuse him. The Pope's recent use of a homophobic slur, not once but twice, is the gift that keeps on giving, the exotic luxuriance of the original Italian word rolled around Ballard's mouth with sensual joy.

Although he's careful to place its origins in a British colonial context and one of broader worldwide division, the better to keep his Fringe audience engaged and land a few cheeky strikes back at the Empire, the principal lightning rod for his ire this time round is last year's referendum in Australia about offering a slightly greater voice to First Nation people in the running of the country.

Although he can't disguise his absolute dismay that his progressive team lost the vote and lashes out hard at the imbecility he sees in his conservative opponents, encouraging Murdoch's media attack dogs to come after him with entertainingly distorted results, Ballard seems to thrive on conflict and flirting with causing offence.

Too often he hectors his well-meaning afternoon preview crowd for not giving him enough back, when it's transparent that his show ought to be in a nighttime slot. With glee, he cycles through variations on the Nazi salute, highlighting the ridiculousness of a civilisation demonising subtle arrangements of arms and fingers.

Yet he knows he cuts a faintly ludicrous, pathetic figure. And his overkill attacks on say, the Swiss, are all the funnier for their disproportionate belligerence.

Jay Richardson

Nate Kitch: Tomorrow Might Not Happen; Now Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 24) Until 26 August

***

The show doesn't really have a beginning, as such, nor, although we are promised one, and Nate has a sign prepared, does it have an actual ending. It has been tricky for Nate, whose plans to write a show about loneliness and isolation were slightly scuppered by finding love. But this mild mannered, engaging, endearingly vague chap has so much else to offer his audience.

We are encouraged to 'have fun with the show'. Which we do. We are warned that 'jokes could happen', and, after an idiosyncratic fashion, they do, although Nate's personal contribution to laughter in the world is the 'scenario'. Look out for that.

Anyway, this show transcends mere jokes. We get Thunderbirds and Dickens, all four dimensions and, of course, ADHD. A comic has to work up a powerful amount of trust in his funny, before he can randomly leave the room and chat to people outside without losing us, his audience. Nate does.

Despite the twin handicaps of having only three people in the room and two of them not knowing who Bill Hicks was, he creates his own kind of adorable comedy carnage. Go see. Take an extension lead.

Kate Copstick

Whore's Eye View

C Arts (Venue 40) Until 25 August

***

Information and even opinion are absorbed much more readily when carried on humour. In A Whore's Eye View we mainly smile, frequently nod and occasionally chuckle, so do not go expecting blue gags and louche laughs. But I defy you to go along and not be engaged and enraged, fascinated and furious.

The comedy here is in the dry wit of Kaytlin Bailey, as she takes us through 10,000 years of female sexual power – the pros (pun intended) and the cons. It is an hour that hurtles by,packed like an ‘80s New York sex club with goddesses and witches, the excesses of the punitive patriarchy, courtesans, politics, war and the burning of cats.

The hour also weaves in Kaytlin's own story, of her time as a sex worker, and those of her role models. There are a couple of references that are particularly American, but Bailey is a seriously smart woman and she will find UK friendly substitutes.

If you do not leave as a passionate supporter of sex workers of all kinds, with a reborn feminist fire in your girlie bits, then you cannot have seen the same show I did.

Kate Copstick