Edinburgh Fringe comedy reviews: Mark Nelson | Alex Kitson | Alastair Clark | Help, My Vagina is Trying To Kill Me

Monkey Barrel at The Hive (Venue 313) until 25 August

Alex Kitson: Do I have to Paint You A Picture ★★★

Hoots Potterrow (Venue 243) until 25 August

Alastair Clark: And Then He Turned the Fun On Himself ★

Slow Progress Cafe & Records (Venue 640) until 25 August

Help, My Vagina is Trying To Kill Me ★

theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall (Venue 53) until 24 August

If you went to a show advertised as dance, and the performer simply stood there and told you about a crippling fall she had as a child that has left her unable to perform an arabesque, you would be irritated, no? Buy tickets for a violin concerto and you do not want to hear how domestic violence related tinnitus makes every performance agony now.

But perhaps because comedy is held in such little regard, perhaps because no one in the Fringe Society cares if the 'Comedy' section has been covertly expanded to include self pity and self indulgence, a worrying proportion of the shows there are simply people talking about themselves and their problems and expecting applause.

Since Jason Cook won plaudits for the first Dead Dad show - 'Joy' - comics have been mining their lives for trauma. Trauma seems to garner stars in what once was the Comedy section.

But the trend has resulted in shows which should really be classed as “let me tell you about myself and my problems for an hour, and yes, you will be expected to pay me” taking up space in the comedy section.

But should a comedy show be presented as “searing” and “brave” ? Is a comedy stage the place to tell people how you came to terms with your neurodiversity diagnosis – for an hour?

“Why not just write some bloody jokes?” says Mark Nelson, on social media. And he does. An hour of Mark Nelson is like finding the funniest new friend imaginable. A great bloke with a potty mouth telling you about fat bastards, football and family. The show is, to paraphrase Sum 41 all grinna no filla. Mark has recently found happiness in stretchable denim, bemoans the fact that post Brexit Europe doesn't give a shit about the UK and shares fond memories of getting his first major sexual experience in the back row of a cinema.

There is quite a lot of sexual activity in his show, some of it involving chips and all of it funny in different ways. He charms the room to the extent that even his somewhat challenging views on abortion get huge laughs. Nelson's much loved family are always in his shows and his tales of the time his son saw him do a routine about having a favourite child, and his trips to the Euros are genuinely touching. But by that time Daddy Nelson is our new best friend and we care about his family. Even the English in the audience loved him, and he is not kind to them, and his thoughts on immigration in Scotland and the Fringe's place in that are impressively thought through. If you fancy an hour of funny, and are broadminded about rimming, this is the show for you.

The whole, 'and now more about me and my (INSERT PERSONAL PROBLEM HERE) might not be the fault of attention seeking comics. Post Baby Reindeer, TV is hunting another trauma.

Alex Kitson tells us he lost TV work because – he was told by the person doing the hiring – he didn't talk about himself enough, so now he predicates his debut hour on a terrible dark “secret” he has hitherto never revealed. The show feels like several shorter sets cobbled together - Bristol and life without internet, Hitler and our newfound love of using negative words to describe something good and what it is about horses that is everything that he wants. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the laughs keep coming. His material is, overall, gently self deprecating, which suits his friendly but somehow anxious delivery. But he hurtles through his material which becomes exhausting over a full hour. Even for the audience. But this is not a bad show, although Alex pretty much keeps his “secret” until the very end where it just feels tacked on for dramatic effect and really quite anti-climactic. I think the bar for “sexual assault” is being set very low here in comedy hour Edinburgh

Talking of which ...

Comedy, hypothesises Alastair Clark, is therapy. Antidepressants, CBT and Talking Therapy have failed him and now he is sharing his mental health issues, emotional vulnerabilities, suicidal thoughts, and memories of what he describes as his childhood sexual assault, with a view to using stand-up to cope with them. The show is deeply personal and, while there is nothing wrong with that, I don't think I am asking too much when I prefer comedy to be, at least in part, comedy, and stand-up to entertain. At least a little, which, to be fair, it did, as Alastair unfurled an unexpected penis and we ended on a laugh.

Passive aggression has a twin: socially enabled arrogance. And it is everywhere this August. The idea that, whatever your condition, it behoves the rest of us to listen and empathise for an hour. Too often these hours are advertised as comedy. A young woman standing on a stage, pleasantly, but without any wit, explaining that she has genital herpes (how she contracted it, how that made her feel, how her boyfriend reacted and how she has felt about it since), that she had a miscarriage a while ago (how that made her feel, how her then husband reacted and how she has felt about it since) and, finally, the procedure she had on her cervix for Stage 2 pre-cancerous cells (how that made her feel, how her now boyfriend reacted and how she feels now): this is not comedy. This is not even entertainment. This is more like a meeting of Gynae Anonymous. There is dark, brutal comedy to be had in all these things but she chooses to look for none of it. And at the risk of nitpicking, Yolo, neither period pains, miscarriage nor your cervix is 'your vagina'.