Edinburgh Fringe Comedy reviews: Rosie O’Donnell | Alan Resnick | Michael Shafar | Ayo Adenekan + more

Rosie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge

Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower (Venue 140)

★★★★☆

Rosie O'Donnell begins her story with the death of her mother, when she was just 11 years old.

“It’s not what you were expecting,” she tells the crowd.

This is not stand-up, it’s comedy storytelling which is slow and earnest, full of emotion, but also funny when it chooses to be.

It’s a one woman show but Rosie’s unseen co-star is Dakota, the child she adopted as a baby, who moved with her to Ireland and whose pronouncements on life often elicit the biggest laughs.

Dakota, who is now known as Clay, is an autistic child with a huge vocabulary, an encyclopaedic knowledge and an insistence on telling the truth. Clay, in Rosie’s telling, has an uncanny wisdom which acts as a chorus to the show.

O'Donnell is a tremendous storyteller. She holds us in the palm of her hand as she tells us about her childhood, her five adopted children and her move to Ireland to escape the terror of Trump’s America.

In exile she discovers a very different response to her celebrity. And the difference for Clay, who is still at school, is eye opening. Rosie doesn’t dwell on the world she’s left behind, although she does share some very orange pictures she painted of her former president. The deranged tweet in which he threatens to remove her US citizenship is also shown. It would be wholly understandable if Rosie indulged in some Trump bashing – but she doesn’t. Instead she pledges to find a better life for her and her child and to help other autistic kids. She’s gentle, thoughtful, intelligent and wise with an ability to conjure emotion which is spellbinding. This isn’t what anyone was expecting, but make no mistake about it, we are in the presence of an absolutely class act.

CLAIRE SMITH

until 10 August

READ MORE: US superstar comic Rosie O'Donnell on her Edinburgh Fringe debut

Alan Resnick: One Funny Hour

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515)

★★★★☆

Alan Resnick seems like a nice guy, short, unprepossessing and slightly nebbish. He lets his shy tech open the show by performing an earnest-sounding poem. And yes, Resnick's potted overview of the various main kinds of comedy seems a bit insincere, spanning clowning, crowd work, edgy comedy and racist comedy, the latter deemed supreme despite his avowed detestation of racism, yet followed through in an arbitrary, but still hate-informed, way. And the mime of an outwardly unthreatening American man shooting everyone in the audience of his late-night basement show dead with dedicated precision might also be a bit upsetting for anyone not raised in a gun culture.

Still, I thought I had an approximate handle on the sort of whimsical contrarianism that Resnick was bringing to Edinburgh for his debut, as I, like the rest of the crowd, accepted a non-disclosure form and was instructed to sign without reading. Mindful of the reviewer's responsibility to their readers, I only pretended to. Yet respect for the comedian's craft prohibits me from revealing too much more. Suffice to say, I found Resnick's analysis of one of the most spoken-about and pressing issues facing humanity initially interesting but increasingly yawn-inducing as it wore on, with him offering no quarter in the depth and detail of his visual lecture.

Just as I was mentally writing the show off as pretentious, anti-comedy guff however, it happened. Did it justify everything that had come before? Yes. Is it escalating variations on the same joke for perhaps 20 minutes? I'll say yes because I lost track of time. Beyond the horrific Emperor's New Clothes aspect there are countless moral implications to Resnick's art that he simply glosses over, emboldened by his satirical, philosophical intent. Tedious, hilarious and awful, One Funny Hour is once seen, never forgotten. In your nightmares.

JAY RICHARDSON

until 24 August

Michael Shafar – Inappropriate

The Beehive Inn (Venue 178)

★★★☆☆

When Shafar really gets going with this show it will be astounding. Right now it is a tantalising taste of an hour that drives across taboos like a combine harvester through comedy corn. He starts gently – why a white woman with a yoga mat in your area is a red flag and the bleakness of British children's fiction – but once he gets his teeth into autism, self diagnosis and white people's desperate need for hardship, he is on a real roll. He seems a little tentative with such strong material, but we are his first audience of the run. His is equal opportunity Sacred Cow slaughter. Immigration, racism, Jews driving German cars, KKK babysitters, the benefits of gay soldiers and why you should fly Emirates… there is enough here to upset half of Edinburgh and the fresh ideas just keep hitting us. Having said which, his idea for a way to replace gender reveal parties is a beaut and would probably be the fastest way to world peace ever to come out of a comedy festival.

Still laughing at the Korean stuff…

KATE COPSTICK

until 25 August

Ayo Adenekan: Black Mediocrity

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 338)

★★★☆☆

Ayo Adenekan's Fringe debut feels as if it's come at least a year too early, as the 23-year-old, 6’3” stand-up, who brings attention to his impressive wingspan, is stretching his material across an hour and can't quite do justice to all of his anecdotes. You get the excitement about him and his eagerness to launch himself onto this stage though, as his potential is undeniable. As a bisexual, slightly nerdy black man of Nigerian heritage who grew up in Edinburgh poshly educated, he has novelty, local knowledge and a number of identity issues tied to race, class, privilege and sexuality, the intersectional interplay of these rendering him distinct. Encompassing three years of his life, his casting in his school nativity play epitomises a tendency towards too much exposition in otherwise successful efforts to ingratiate himself with the crowd. Elsewhere, though, a shocking example of racism lands like a punch in the face, from out of the blue, in marked contrast to Adenekan's wry treatment of more insidious, micro-bigotry before it. The account pleads for more storytelling sophistication and he ought to rework it in the future. An emerging talent with innate likeability and presence, he's surely destined for greater things.

JAY RICHARDSON

until 24 August

Catriona Dowden: Dance Like Everyone's Dancing

Carbon (Venue 180)

★★★☆☆

Comedy that goes where no laughs have ever been got before is rarer than a bag of chips for under four quid in August, but Catriona gives us an hour of it. Her downbeat delivery and gentle-going-on-fragile demeanour are perfectly suited to her material, which plays ('riffs' seems too excitable a term to use) on medieval Anchoresses, dealing with apocalyptic thoughts, cruelty to 18th century pigeons and other animals and the devastating effects of feminism on the buoyancy of nuns. You simply will not get observational stand-up from a tiny, closed, onstage religious cell anywhere else. The section giving advice on acceptable wimpling manages to be absolutely hilarious as well as unexpectedly fascinating. This is cleverly constructed, properly thought through stuff, pretty much every turn and twist of the hour. There is a joke with a record-breakingly long set-up, quite a lot of information on vaginismus (stay with her, she keeps this section pretty tight...), St Vitus Dance, and how she and her sister became the Kneecap of NW Berkshire. We all leave knowing more about the inadequacies of 21st Century gynaecology than we had anticipated. Catriona might speak softly but she carries a big comedy stick.

KATE COPSTICK

until 24 August

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