Edinburgh Fringe Comedy reviews: Chris Cantrill: Easily Swayed | Hot Department | Josh Thomas: Let's Tidy Up | Will Sebag-Montefiore: Will of the People | Alexandra Hudson: Making Lemonade

Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Tron) (Venue 51) until 25 August

At the start of this life-affirming hour, Chris Cantrill jokes that there will be nothing here for audience members in their 20s. He is, after all, talking about what it’s like moving to the middle of nowhere, far from his friends and his youth, and dealing with the challenges that middle age brings.

But Easily Swayed is very much a show for anyone who cares about people and likes laughing. The importance of human connection, the receding of youth and the embracing of funny habits are fertile themes, and here they’re handled with charming eccentricity by a self-aware comic who’s smuggling some important truths into a steady stream of silly jokes.

Four years ago, during the “great blight”, Cantrill moved from the city to a rural spot near Hadrian’s Wall with his wife and son. Easy access to his friends and youthful pursuits vanished. And then suddenly he was no longer in his 30s.

When you’re from the Jackass generation and the WhatsApp group you share with your three best pals – “the Fellowship” – is more preoccupied with sharing memes than feelings, opening up about your mental health might not come naturally. But Cantrill finds a way in.

Crucially, it’s all handled with the lightest and daftest of touches; you’d expect nothing less from the man who’s one half of the twice-Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated Delightful Sausage (with Amy Gledhill).

Easily Swayed is emphatically not a show with a cynical emotional wobble at the 40-minute mark. We hear a little about the highs and lows of rural life (and death), the ludicrous things he does to entertain himself, and Cantrill has got some solid self-deprecating material about his relationship with his family members.

While other acts might risk slipping into self-indulgence with this subject matter, Cantrill instead wraps it all up with fun and points towards the solution: showing, rather than telling, that good mental health is a journey. Ashley Davies

Hot Department ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) (Venue 33) until 25 August

Mixed sex sketch acts are a rarity at the Fringe, still less those spanning the sexual spectrum in sparkling hotpants and doing sketches about sex that are actually sexy. But Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva aren't great ones for paying attention as their stop-start opening number attests, with them rhythmically grinding their backsides in the audience's direction to prove it. 

From roleplay to submission and other kinks, the Australian pair cycle through sweaty, sultry and dramatic portraits of couples in their late-night Fringe debut. The best is them simply thwarting each other with a stilted improv display, the interplay of their act frostily held up to the light for scrutiny. 

That they're both raging narcissists is the joke but Hot Department are actually impressively attuned to the audience's responses and each other, ad-libbing snappily when the opportunity arises. Their extended closing skit, a sort of twisted pastiche of the Barbie movie's feminist message is psychotically silly, with twists, turns, physical and tension release. It arguably goes on far too long but it's a heck of an abiding memory to take home to your relatively humdrum existence. Jay Richardson

Josh Thomas: Let's Tidy Up ★★★

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

A belated Fringe debut for Australian comedy luminary Josh Thomas, Let's Tidy Up is a 70-minute, one-man monologue about the comic's various neurological quirks and turbulent love life, as solipsistic as it sounds yet totally embracing it. Diagnosed with ADHD long before it was fashionable – and, more recently, with autism too – a stray remark from his therapist that his attention deficit is “incurable” has sent Thomas spiralling on and off for years, making the task of tidying his home a make-or-break referendum on his value as a human being. 

Having left the love of his life in Australia after a mortifyingly funny break-up episode, Thomas moved to Hollywood. There, his onscreen success was not matched by that of his personal life, a series of misunderstandings, missed cues and second guessing as to whether he was destined to live out his days as an isolated cartoon villain. 

Self-obsessed to a rare talent and with no shame he won't talk about, Thomas is chattily candid and very funny on the less appealing aspects of his personality, occasionally waspish but invariably often naively loveable too, a lost soul only discerning patterns and solutions with hindsight. The narrative doesn't quite support the weight of its theatrical pretensions but he is still fine company. Jay Richardson

Will Sebag-Montefiore: Will of the People ★★★

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Jersey) (Venue 302) until 26 August

One of the nimbler online satirists for banging content up on the internet – and one with a particularly good ear for adapting a tune – Will Sebag-Montefiore delivers a predictably slick and consistent solo Fringe debut. Having previously enjoyed some festival success with the inoffensive, broad appeal sketch act Just These Please, there's nothing here to frighten the Establishment but still much to admire, with the musical comic a warm and witty afternoon draw. 

Beset by his looming wedding and a posh name that carries little of the privilege but several of the problems of being a distant cousin of historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Will of the People is powered by the comic's gently flustered energy and self-mocking anxiety at pivoting from jobbing actor to cultural commentator, over-reliant on the capricious Elon Musk's toxic stewardship of Twitter/X. 

Game recognises game in his acknowledgement of the internet grift of Laurence Fox, turning the controversialist blowhard's sexist twaddle and feeble humour back on him, while an Eminem-inspired rap as Nigel Farage lands some appreciable digs at the Reform MP's role in stoking the far-right. A number about taking the UK's political leaders on a stag do feels like blatant Radio 4 commissioner bait. But the lyrics are admirably tight and Sebag-Montefiore is self-aware enough to ask whether he's making a difference or simply seeking a pat on the back for being clever. Jay Richardson

Alexandra Hudson: Making Lemonade ★★★

Assembly George Square (The Box) (Venue 8) until 25 August

If you were to write a stand-up comedian's origin story, you could do a lot worse than steal Alexandra Hudson's. Raised in a rural Australian backwater that punches above its weight producing sport stars, she was born a triplet but with complications leading to cerebral palsy. Her identical twin is currently competing as a judo Olympian and back in the day the pair impishly used their resemblance to lure Hudson's school bullies to their doom. But Hudson was not wrapped up in cotton wool – another childhood accident causing her further brain damage.

With her physical and neurological impairments, bitterness could come easy to Hudson. But in her chronological account she is reflective, establishing that it's non-disabled people who interpret her life as full of lemons. Rather, she exploits her position for often dark laughs, from cheerily presenting herself as a visual reminder of mortality, to gleefully pointing out that having sex with her is punishable in some parts of Australia (her partner would be presumed to have taken advantage).

Although she forcibly establishes her sexuality and subverts the bureaucracy and social conventions she's ensnared in, Hudson is less effective at explaining the Australian benefits system, while her atypical delivery perhaps doesn't always afford her punchlines the impact she intends. Jay Richardson