Review Centre: Comedians

"Thank you again for your great performance. Everyone really had an amazing time. You are very talented and engaging."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Awesome magician seen him grow from the beginning now becoming a master of his craft!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Serendipity is what you’re aiming for in Edinburgh: a happy discovery out of the blue. Yes, it sounds like a paradox, like “expect the unexpected”. But up here, you must not just expect it, but welcome it. So if you hear, for instance (in a genu-ine example from a few years ago), of a 15-minute musical about a stewardess called The Jolly Folly Of Polly The Scottish Trolley Dolly playing in a minor venue towards the bottom of the Royal Mile, well, it’s not much time or money, so you’ve nothing to lose by taking a punt on it. And if you’re staggering across the Royal Mile in the small hours and meet a crowd of drunken loud¬mouths, wait for a couple of minutes before writing them off: it could be comedian Arthur Smith’s legendary Alternative Walking Tour. This event, though, is now in semi-retirement following an incident in 2000 when the reeling mob was mistaken for a bunch of nocturnal anti-Ann Widdecombe protesters (no, honestly), which led to the arrest of comic Simon Munnery for assaulting a police offi¬cer . . . “assaulting” in the sense of getting in the way of the cop’s body- charge. (Munnery’s tried and acquittal were amusing, too, but took place outside Festival season.) The true Edinburgh expe-rience is being knocked side-ways by a show, trying to explain it to others and real-ising that there’s no way you can do so and still sound remotely compos mentis, such as the piece about 10 years ago which consisted of a Hungarian woman in a sealed Perspex tank, per¬forming a dance routine whose duration and moves were limited by the available air in the box. If I were to say that last week I was affected beyond words by a Polish theatre company singing the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh in the strange polyphonic harmonies of southern Albania, you’d no doubt wonder whether I’ve been getting enough sleep lately. Yet Chronicles: A Lamenta-tion by the Piesn Kozla com-pany is a remarkable piece admirable and impressive, though hardly shattering. And then, walking away from the venue a few min¬utes after it was over, I had to stop in my tracks: I was fighting back tears, for no reason I could identify. Somehow the piece had bypassed the conscious areas of my mind and tapped into the well of basic emotion. Harrowing stuff. But the main discovery of the month so far is altogether more joy-ous: a bunch of Ukrainian paper-tearing clowns: Around 1990, Italian “ori¬gami impressionist” Ennio Marchetto was the hit of the Fringe, performing a series of mime impersonations while wearing amazingly intricate costumes he had constructed out of card¬board. Marchetto returns this weekend for the first time in several years, but he may find his thunder already stolen by the Mim-I- Richi company and their show Paper World. Not that their show is as painstakingly designed . . . dean me, no. They sim¬ply tear loads of plain paper up and play with it. And I mean loads: possibly around an acre of the stuff per show. You walk into the theatre, see a huge paper backdrop and think, “Ah, that’ll be the climax of the show.” Not a bit of it: it’s already in shreds after half an hour, and the fun keeps coming. Mim-I-Richi’s discovery is a simple one: tear paper, crumple it up, and you can pretend it’s just about any-thing: a football, a baby, a maneating monster, what¬ever. It’s the same sort of aesthetic which has informed many of designer Julian Crouch’s projects in the UK with Improbable Theatre, but more endear¬ingly ramshackle. Also like Improbable, Mim-I-Richi relishes the spontaneous and unexpected; it’s that shared delight in the moment which is at the heart of the best clowning. The players go to great lengths to involve the audience in their show, and are happy to take ideas and run with them, even when the “idea” is an uncontroRa- ble little boy in the front row who won’t stop flinging balls of paper back at them. For this isn’t enforced audience participation of the “let’s pretend we’re having fun” kind. The four perform-ers manage to get hundreds of people in the Pod Deco’s main space all pratting about gleefully like kids in a playground; they create an atmosphere of free play that is intensely liberating, and make sure that every single person in the house is car¬ried along. All that without a single word of dialogue. People by the hundred are discovering Mim-I-Richi up here, but that doesn’t make the joy of serendipity any less when you find them yourself."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Joe puts up funny videos on social which are a funny quick laugh for your day. I forward them to my boys and husband! During shut down he did a zoom stand up. He talked about family and friends and told the stories as if he were just hanging out talking to you. The set was very natural and we laughed the whole time! Being a funny communicator come natural for him and it shows in his sets!! I can’t wait for the next show or video!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Jeff, I’d like to say thank you for your very moving and inspirational performance during the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Hanger Education Fair. Your presentation was very well received by the attendees, and it set the stage for what many people thought was the most successful Education Fair we have ever had. The message you delivered after your vocal performance helped all of us at Hanger gain a greater appreciation for how the work we do impact our patients’ lives. Thank you again and best wishes."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"The first time I saw Mimirichi, last year at the Edinburgh Fringe, I knew I would have to put them at the core of my fiendish and cunning plan for world domination. Mimirichi would leave everyone weak with laughter and begging me for more of the fun, and, of course, I would be a benign autocrat, sending Mimirichi out on a world-wide mission to sponsor their own brand of warm fuzziness and community spirit. In this cold, competitive world Mimirichi liberates hearts and minds and promotes participation and collaboration. The awful thing is that they are only at the Riverside Studios for TWO nights (until 1st July)! Please, please, rush down to Hammersmith and secure tickets for yourself, all your family (especially menopausal aunts and grumpy old men), your evil-minded neighbours, your traffic wardens and rouge traders, your bank manager and your boss. The four-man creative team at the heart of the mad, mad world of Mimirichi are superb physical performers who start off with some simple slapstick and build to a breathtaking break-dancing finale. But their secret lies in their generosity and the way they engage us with their world. This is a place where the imagination can transform paper into anything we want it to be and half of the fun is the delight in collaborating with them to make these transformations happen. It is a clown theatre for young and old alike, because it's full of the familiar and everyday. Mimirichi's Paper World is peopled with recognizable characters. There's the little guy with the broom overwhelmed by litter bugs on the rampage. And perhaps it's the same voracious paper-munching clown evolving into a despot who gets himself crowned with pomp and circumstance, and, to push the point home, also devours handbags and jackets from among the audience. I guarantee that by the end of the 85-minute show you will be shouting, screaming, pelting each other with paper, passing great swathes of the stuff back and forth and even eager to step onto the stage and be transformed into a goal-keeper for a paper football penalty or a beauty queen. At the core of this age-old humour there is an odd but recognizable logic at work, an absurd logic, or even illogical logic, perhaps, but once we accept the rules it all makes perfect sense (something like when Charlie Chaplin's starving tramp cooks his boots and eats them with perfect table manners and social etiquette). Mimirichi's gags are reminiscent of these extended comic scenarios from the Commedia lazzi and the silent movies. For example, a man desperate to find a public urinal is given increasingly complicated directions by a street cleaner in which each round of mimed instructions seems to take the longed for relief further away on a journey that includes swimming and punting across a river. Mimirichi put us in touch with a part of ourselves we don't pay much attention to these days. They belong to a long tradition of European clowning that includes the great zannis of Commedia dell'Arte, Chaplin and Keaton, Max Wall, Mayall and Edmondson and so on. This is an eternal and universal form of clowning, the carnivalesque, the Lords of Misrule, rather than the sanitized comic turns fed to children in 20th century circuses. In days gone by, this type of carnival event was considered dangerous by princes and municipalities, so that the travelling performers where often borderline outlaws. Happily, Mimirichi are completely legit, but they still can show us a few things that authoritarian rulers feared: that what usually passes for logic is suspect, and that a creative and imaginative response can present alternative solutions to traditions we take for granted. Perhaps, we should send them to the G8 Summit. If you cannot make it down to the Riverside Studios tonight go instead to a tattooist and have MIMIRICHI inscribed on your forehead, so that you will recognize their name should they come to a venue close to you at a future date."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"As I posted on GoogleMyBusiness: "Kevin entertained the kids at my son's birthday party and had they had the most amazing time. He was so funny and easy to work with. The kids were cracking up at the talking dog. So much fun!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Joey Emceed our 45th Annivery 70s Hippie Themed party. He was hilarious! While everyone was rocking hippie costumes Joe's showed up as Marty McFly from Back To The Future. And that was just the start of his uniqe humor! Everyone loved him! Wgen he saw a lull in party he was quick to take the stage to liven things up with jokes, games and-- although we had not met before our party-- funny stories he gathered from brief phone interview with me. That night my husband and I, along with many of our guests, joined the long list of Fans of Joey The Italian Scarecrow! Later we enjoyed one of Joey's ZOOM Stand-Up Comedy Nights and hired him a 2nd time to emcee our 50th Anniversary and even though The Pandemic put the fire out on our original plans, Joey made a total success of our ZOOM party. He allowed plenty of visiting but was always on the ready with jokes and hilarious videos of himself performing stand-up and routines performed by himself and partner in crime and life-- his lovely and funny wife Steph. Hire them for your next event before the line gets too long!!! You won't regret it!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Highly recommend! We had Chris P Tee for my daughters 5th birthday. He was absolutely fantastic. Really funny for both kids and adults and genuinely lovely. Thanks you Chris ?"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Amazing Ade - Amazing Show. I have never laughed so much. One of the guests Ade hypnotised was my uncle and he was absolutely hilarious. Cant wait for the next one my partner is definitely volunteering, he just doesn't know it yet!."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Very easy to work with. Perfect performance for 200+ high school seniors and chaperones. Would definitely work with him again."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"I recently booked Lovdev at a couple of gigs within a few weeks of each other, and he nailed it at both gigs. I spend time compiling a line up that is varied in style and content. He really did complement the bills well, and delivered great sets at each gig. He was the 2017 UK Pun Champion, so will give you an idea of what he does if you haven’t seen him before. I would be very comfortable outing him on any of my bills, and intend to do so in due course. His infectious style is guaranteed to go down well, and I highly recommend him for sure."

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"We spoke after your show, Half Soaked. I really enjoyed it, and thought you delivered some great jokes. I really enjoy your story telling, the way you interact with the audience and the enjoyment you find from making others laugh is very apparent. I hope you continue with it!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Our Beetlejuice impersonator Daniel was awesome! He was easy to work with and came prepared. He joked around with our guests and played the perfect undead jokester. He was the highlight of my party. I would absolutely hire him again."

Reply by Beetlejuice Impersonator
Thank you. You all were very fun people to work with!

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review:

"Chris was great! We booked him for my sons 5th birthday party. The children loved him and laughed all the way through! They particularly liked his puppet. My son loved doing magic with Chris, his reaction to pulling coins out of thin air was priceless!"

Rating: 10 / 10 Share this review: