Fringe comedy reviews: Brit Barron: CHURCH | Peter Buckley Hill: Miscellaneous Sh*te | Anna Thomas & more

COMEDY

Brit Barron: CHURCH ★★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 30 August

Brit Barron's Fringe baptism in a modest room in the Gilded Balloon really shouldn't phase her, as the sometime evangelical Christian used to preach to 5000 people, several times a day, as a pastor in a Mississippi megachurch. And it's little surprise too that the LA-based comic can tell a compelling, at times mystical, story, and hold an audience, which she does with relaxed ease and recourse to secular hymns from the likes of The Five Stairsteps and Simon & Garfunkel. A biracial Black-Mexican who had little grounding in her Hispanic identity, from birth Barron's soul was for the Church of the Deep South, the make do and counterfeit approach of her poor family reflecting her branch of Christianity's laissez-faire attitude to appropriating popular culture and rewriting it for God. However, the adolescent Barron wasn't just raised in the evangelical lifestyle, she lived and breathed it, experiencing transcendental joy in the sense of community and its performative aspects, while feeling no temptation to transgress its dogmatic “Sin List” with the likes of boys. By her mid 20s, she'd ascended to the pinnacle of her vocation.

Despite the strength of her faith though, Barron had already begun to realise she was a lesbian. And when she met the second great love of her life, she was forced to choose, with considerable personal fallout. Ably assisted by the blue-eyed crooning of Paul Stephen on keyboard, Barron's is undeniably an affecting account. But she's lapsed hard and is waggishly, ironically funny about her youth. Those sermonising skills don't seem too rusty, as she teasingly argues for the lingering misogyny of golf making it the great gay leisure activity. And although she's now arch and sardonic, she's still gracious to the intolerant and concerned about the state of the world, maintaining that although religion may be flawed and exclusive, people really need to feel part of something bigger than themselves. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Peter Buckley Hill: Miscellaneous Sh*te ★★★★★

Canons' Gait (Venue 78) until 29 August

Before you read on, you should know that I am a huge fan of Peter Buckley Hill, and that on the day I review him, I actually flyer for him. However, at his insistence, I brace myself for the possibility that the show is “utter shite”. In point of fact, the title of this (one of three PBH rotating offerings for the month) is Miscellaneous Shite which, in my humble opinion, is a little like describing the British Museum as “loads of boring old stuff stolen from everywhere”.

In deference to Peter, I do try to find the shite in his hour of comedy gold, but I cannot. The material is old like a much loved pair of comedy slippers and I envy anyone (surely they must be few and far between) who is hearing any of this for the first time. Most of us here tonight are not, but our glee matches his as we join in 'Under the Aardvark', raise our voices in the introductory 'Ohhhhhhhh' that precedes each song, and rock with laughter at his Easter No 1. In a departure from his usual style, Peter has included an actual joke in this show. A very good one, as it happens.

Fans of circumcision, chips, dogs with no noses, ghastly puns and celebrating the deaths of dictators are well served here. There is a particular delight in watching a brain the size of a small town in the Highlands being silly. OK, not just silly. There are, every so often, beautifully honed political pinpricks, but nothing is ever made too much of. This is the kind of show that takes decades to get this comfy. In something of a first for me, a loud outpouring of disappointment is heard in the room, as Peter announces we are coming to the end of the show. In its own way, this is a masterclass. Dishevelled and idiosyncratic to the nth degree, but a masterclass. Kate Copstick

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COMEDY

Anna Thomas: How to Juggle a Ferret ★★★

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire) (Venue 338) until 30 August

With a standout early visual gag that betrays her surreally-tinged humour and domestic slovenliness, Anna Thomas is surrounded on stage by the trappings of her childhood bedroom and trapped by them in turn. The effusive Welsh stand-up was “feral” at university she tells us, really putting herself out there in more ways than one. But a bout of glandular fever brought her back to her mum's house and she hasn't flown the nest again yet. When she does spend time away, her similarly eccentric parent redeploys her bedroom for agriculture. But given Thomas' playful artistic licencing of reality, there must be a suspicion that this is simply a blatantly contrived metaphor. For anybody part of Generation Rent or a boomerang kid, not to mention those afflicted by the peer comparison of social media, this endearingly daft debut really ought to strike a chord. However, Thomas' issues are also far more deep-rooted and personal than they initially appear. And you sympathise with her as she deflects and distracts with her capricious silliness. Seemingly on an upward trajectory, it's to be hoped that she gets greater opportunities to more fully express and indulge her whimsical inclinations soon. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Harry Jun: Inside Jokes, Outside Voice ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

Considering he once performed for the Dalai Lama, albeit in an excruciatingly insensitive school dramatisation of the Tibetan genocide that exiled His Holiness, Edinburgh is graced to have Harry Jun performing here. The larky, amiable Korean-Australian from Wollongong was almost the sole ethnic diversity of his school. And he's evolved an instinctive boundary-testing, insider-outsider perspective, delighted to find Asians with Scottish accents, highly alert to prejudice but abusing stereotyping whenever it suits him. His clubbable side revels in the bonding ritual of inside jokes, more so than his actual stand-up. And he celebrates his cultural inheritance, noting the impact on birthrates when K-Pop demigods BTS took time out to complete their national service. Initially, he just seems like a bit of a goof with the charming cheek of an arrested adolescent. But when he relates how a bigoted teacher failed him, before he, in turn, went out of his way to help a struggling pupil when he worked in education, the principles of the man shine through. Acknowledging the modern, doomscrolling malaise of juggling an addiction to Chinese lesbian TikTok with witnessing atrocities in the world, he's refreshingly frank and uncompromising in exercising his freedom of speech, appreciating the full cost of it. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Ania Magliano: Peach Fuzz ★★★

Monkey Barrel 3 @ Monkey Barrel Comedy (Venue 515) until August 30

Taskmaster and Saturday Night Live are the new big drivers of ticket sales at this Fringe, and Ania Magliano has been on both. So there are lines snaking down Blair Street with hundreds of punters hoping to see Magliano in real life.

But newfound telly fame leaves our Fringe comic with a dilemma. Do they embrace their new, wider demographic, or do they cling doggedly to the old one and risk alienating half the crowd? Magliano does the latter, leaving half her newfound audience cold.

Her material relies too strongly on the cultural reference points of her particular generation. Older and younger audience members are baffled by her niche references to pop culture, children’s toys and breakfast cereals and god help any international audience members who have wandered in.

Magliano has always been a person who talks openly about her sex life; she’s refreshingly upfront, with an eccentric take on intimate experiences. But there’s just too much waffling on about vulvas.

There’s plenty of sex but not much emotion, and I’m not sure I believe her claim to have developed a crush on Winston Churchill. However it does give her a rather nifty way to end the show which combines both sex and politics. Claire Smith

COMEDY

Omar Badawy: Guided Detour ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

An identity angst show with a couple of crisis flashpoints, Omar Badawy's elegantly written, impeccably performed Fringe debut is perhaps a little too polished but entertains all the same. The tall, visibly brown-skinned British-Egyptian stand-up opens by recalling how he accidentally wandered into Tommy Robinson's far-right, Unite the Kingdom rally in London last year. However, to compound matters and muddy the ethnic waters, he was in Viking garb for a fancy dress party, presenting his fellow marchers with a discombobulating spectacle. Now, as a posh Arab and Muslim who went to a Christian school, uncertain in his political opinions and intimidated by alpha males, Badawy is accustomed to code switching and bluffing. But there was clearly more jeopardy here than usual. And even when he joins the counter rally, he's almost just as out of place. Meanwhile, his Arab-American girlfriend has just realised her visa is about to expire and she risks being deported unless they marry, so head-spinning, he races across London to the party. Guided Detour's central drama stretches credulity to breaking point. Yet Badawy is otherwise a proficient storyteller who weaves in some amusing autobiographical tangents, his tale of having to vet and “date” his divorced mother's potential suitors a doozy. Jay Richardson

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