Fringe comedy reviews: Sam Morrison | Sarah Roberts | Milo Edwards | Tarang Hardikar | Lilla Multipass

Sam Morrison: DUCK ★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 31 August

Sam Morrison has always had a thing for fat, older guys. It goes as far back as fancying his rabbi when he was a kid, led to him secretly dating a professor while at college, and then, in 1919, falling in love with someone twice his age.

That man, Jonathan, died of Covid two and a half years later, inspiring Morrison to create Sugar Daddy, a show about the grief he was struggling to make sense of. And while he was able to process those emotions (to an extent) into comedy, there was clearly a lot of pain still sitting in his body, which led to some serious physical and psychological problems.

This sounds heavy, but it’s a cheeky, high-tempo and entertaining account of how he got to understand what was happening. It’s all told in tandem with some fun – if not always entirely relevant, but that's OK – material about animals and evolution. We hear, for example, about some bizarre mating practices in the animal kingdom (ducks, as per the title, feature prominently) and get a chance to contemplate the evolutionary purpose of “gym” muscles and goosebumps.

There’s a lot going on in Duck, with Morrison’s hyperactive charm, theatricality and instinct for jokes fuelling the momentum. Ashley Davies

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Sarah Roberts: Scary Movie 7 ★★★★

Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) until 30 August

In a world where it’s considered cringe to say you’re lonely, but prospective matches on dating apps will have no compunction about saying they want to piss on you – just as friends, mind – Sarah Roberts is understandably fraught.

Entering the venue, the “dungeon of loneliness”, in black robes and theatrical chains, she digs into the grotesquery of being alone and having done embarrassing things in pursuit of human connection.

Underneath it all is the gruesome fact that she “ate” her twin in the womb; if there’s a more vivid metaphor or jumping off point at this Fringe, I’d love to see it. Veering between cute girly slang and outright menace, she jokes about having “girl bossed” so hard that she absorbed her sister - the one person who could have been her companion.

The theme of being enveloped by another recurs in this exhilarating hour. With skilled writing and a delivery that’s sometimes understated, sometimes terrifying, she expresses an ideal of two souls absorbing each other in an all-consuming love, the relationship resulting in one person’s own deep ancestral sadness merging with the other’s problems.

There’s even more darkness at play. She refers to a family tradition of self-sabotage, including the mention of an ancestor who managed to escape a pogrom but still embraced the “what if I ruined it?” ethos. She feels she’s inherited this flaw and she turns thoughts of doom into comedy gold. There’s also a chilling bit about a core family memory, and brief references to moments when she put herself at risk – all in pursuit of connection or validation.

Throw in a story about how it felt to go viral on Twitter for a throwaway remark and you’ve got a compellingly presented illustration of the messy truth of life. Ashley Davies

Milo Edwards: Catamaran ★★★★

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

Milo Edwards never wanted to be seen as a detached, cerebrally aloof comic who impresses television commissioners into overlooking him. And he unquestionably never sought to devote so much of his Fringe comedy career to his late parents and adult orphanhood. But we are where we are.

And during lockdown, Edwards was with his mother before she died, as she trawled through love letters from her deceased husband and listened to Radio 2 constantly. Revisiting those letters now and nurturing his newfound preoccupation with broadcaster Jeremy Vine, a man for whom no subject gear shift is too discordant, but who represents Edwards' big television break by dubious back door, he finds the epistolary correspondence remarkable in its horniness.

However, that's only the ever-present top note, the sniggeringly funny headline in their seductive appeal for Edwards as he tries to piece together his progenitors' lives before they had him, the more eccentric, flashily affluent 1980s circles that his father moved within in Hong Kong before the money inexplicably disappeared.

Cuttingly articulate, reflexively sardonic and a little sneery, sentimentalism is anathema for an upstart, intellectual bruiser like Edwards, whose personal trajectory has taken him from Essex tradesman associate to Cambridge University, Russian television to Vine's woke sidekick.

And as he pursues the detective work of filling in blanks in the letters, censored by his mother, though not for smut, the deeper kinship he forges with his father especially is exemplified by a shared streak of dark humour around subject matter such as 9/11.

And it's here, being supremely witty and knowingly transgressive as he cracks wise about Osama bin Laden, the Khmer Rouge, IRA and the Russian Revolution, that Edwards reiterates his informed mastery of blackly funny, cold-eyed stand-up. Jay Richardson

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Tarang Hardikar: If I’m Not Wrong ★★★★

Attic at Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

A slender man with frightened eyes, Tarang Hardikar has hands that soar like swallows or butterflies when he tells his stories. To begin, his comedy is abstract. Hardikar, who is making his Fringe debut, talks of equations, of lines, arrows and circles. His jokes are like mathematical formulae, suspended in the air.

At first you wonder whether Hardikar will relax. He seems jumpy. But gradually he lets us into his world, and little by little the jokes build and fit together into a narrative.

Hardikar takes us back to his childhood. To a time when he was so introverted he hardly spoke and lived mostly in a tent made of pillows in his bedroom. How can a child like that build a world that makes sense? His story leaps backwards and forwards in time, jumping from the child he was to the man he is now, standing in front of us, making us laugh. Because it turns out Hardikar is very funny indeed. He plays tricks on us with his words, he stretches the space between him, on stage, and us the audience. Gradually we relax.

Along the way we meet trees that move, a psychiatrist masquerading as an art teacher and a shy boy standing beside a football pitch. What begins as abstract mathematical and philosophical patterns builds into a beautiful and vivid picture of an unusual mind.

With mind-bending wordplay, philosophical conundrums, diagrams and physical buffoonery, Hardikar makes us laugh more and more. And we all relax. Claire Smith

Lilla Multipass: Woman(33) ★★★

Hoots @ Potterow (Venue 243) until 30 August

Hungarian clown Lilla Multipass is a gently beguiling character, her childlike hopes for the world at odds with her being 33 and in therapy.

At least that's the framing for this bewildering hour from the London-based act, in which she strives to have it all, professional fulfilment, a meaningful relationship and the material trappings of a successful life.

Overwhelmed by popular brands such as IKEA and adopting some of their iconography, the vibes are inclusive and she beckons you into her world, literally encircling some audience members in a golden embrace. Yet it's all rather confusing – are we meant to be alienated and emancipated too? - and, with the best will in the world, the wordy script doesn't do her any favours performing in her second language.

There are moments of poignancy and laughs smattered throughout, though often of the nervous, uncertain variety. Still, she's an endearing presence and surely capable of greater clarity of purpose and focus given more time and experience. Jay Richardson

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