Assembly Festival – Squirrel Comedy

Takashi Wakasugi: Welcome to Japan

By Ron Bingham

Takashi is a Japanese comedian who has relocated to Australia which he loves, but is finding the language and cultural differences somewhat complicated. He is a quirky comedian, with a genuinely unique style that is both bossy and cheeky. It can take the audience a while to get into his rhythm, but once he gets going he wins us over with his charm and skill as a comedian.

Welcome to Japan sees Takashi pondering about some of the idiosyncrasies of the English language (I’ve always wondered why it isn’t teethbrush, too) and the general oddness of Westerners. As a comedian, it’s not surprising that he would find laughs in the tools he needs for his craft and his discovering western culture overall. He does also talk about some of the quirks of the Japanese people both in and out of their homeland, so it’s not all one way.

There is sometimes a vibe of Takashi being a school teacher or hard Taskmaster, he gets a little upset when we don’t respond quickly enough to his audience participation, but the ethical dilemmas he poses often need a little more time – CAN you justify buying the cage eggs if the free range ones are sold out? What do you do with pizza the next day, and how does it relate to your social status? The hard stuff. His slideshow is a highlight that has the audience in fits, but mostly it is just Takashi giving us some good jokes and asking us complex questions.

The room was full of well-entertained people on the night I was there. Takashi was a pleasant and genial host who kept us laughing for the full hour with his stories of encounters with the world outside Japan, and this was a fun show that may have you thinking the next day about the words you use.

Welcome to Japan is on at Assembly George Square Studios until August 25

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/takashi-wakasugi-welcome-to-japan

Randy Feltface: First Banana

By Lisa Clark

As Randy acknowledges partway through First Banana, his new social media fans may be somewhat surprised by this show. Most of his famous on-line bits (posted by his Social Media guru) are crowd interaction bits and Randy as usual does very little of it in his show. He’s a much better comedian than that!

Randy has always had a little banter with his audience and it’s always been awesome due to his quick wit and the frisson of not actually being able to see the person he’s talking to, but it has never been central to his shows which have always had him exploring big ideas and deep introspection. The big idea at the heart of this show gradually develops and is basically how did we get to this point of a fucked up scorched planet while letting the Nazis back in, and why is Randy doing such a short run at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?

Apart from the social media presence, Randy gained some fame on a US Talent show which brought new fans (and a surname) and he has been constantly touring the US and Europe since then. He tells about his main brush with Hollywood which was an audition to play the Alien in the new Alien movie out now, where he got to wear a Xenomorph head, it was extremely cool, hilarious and devastating even if it was a bit of a segue away from his other stories. He also got some huge laughs from some political asides and an impression of a certain Australian Olympian break dancer that he’ll never be able to do again.

There are at least 2 main story strands throughout, one about the history of bananas and how it is central to the entire world being up shit creek and the other about his Life and his storage unit. He of course began life as Sammy J’s second banana, but he has always been a brilliant comedian in his own right. He lost the audience somewhat when banging on about Big Bird being made of the feathers of hundreds of birds, but they might not realise that being a serious vegan he might not enjoy the irony of hundreds of real birds dying so one Big Bird Muppet can entertain children. But he wins them back with banger singalong songs, meeting his parents and getting them to join in on his grand master-plan.

If Randy was not a puppet he’d be lauded as one of the greatest Australian comedians of his generation. Well he’s won the top Australian comedy Award and has had a sitcom with Sammy J but hey why isn’t Randy hosting his own Chat show or game show? He’d be awesome. He might not have time anyway, too busy on his way to conquering the world.

First Banana has finished its run.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/randy-feltface-first-banana

The Umbilical Brothers: The Distraction

By Ron Bingham

Australian comedy legends The Umbilical Brothers are back in Edinburgh with a second run of their sold out 2023 show The Distraction. With a mix of technical wizardry, loads of cameras, props, tablet sized screens and two large green panels festooning the stage, Shane and David treat the audience to an hour of mayhem and surreal visual effects, all in real time on the stage. They are ably assisted by Bob the techie (apparently Bob has a show at 1am with Shane doing the tech job, but I can’t find it in the programme).

They claimed, at about the ten minute mark, that they have never experienced so many technical problems. This could be true, as many of the high-tech items were playing up tonight. Still, while the problems were being sorted, Shane and Dave kept the audience entertained with a running commentary or silly visual jokes on the big screen. Members of the audience helped in the show, mostly by having cameras pointed at us and allowing the Umbilicals to do terrible things to our images on the screen. Including me, but I still don’t think Shane got my voice quite right and at least they didn’t explode my head. There are also some scenes of giant rampaging babies.

The room, which seats around 200, was full of happy punters who all appeared to thoroughly enjoy the show. Even though I was there on a Monday (traditionally a day of rest for most shows), I recommend booking a ticket, as it’s a good fun family friendly show that’ll have you chuckling for days over some of the antics.

The Distraction is on at Assembly Roxy until August 25

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/umbilical-brothers-the-distraction

5 Mistakes That Changed History

By Ron Bingham

British historian and comedian Paul Coulter (who lives in Australia) chooses five points in history when a mistake had profound repercussions. The five mistakes he has chosen to regale us with are:

The death of Alexander The Great.
The introduction of tomatoes to Europe.
A Missisippi (sic) steamship captain being distracted in 1850 ( Paul never specified the river, but they ended up in New Orleans and I wanted to see if I could spell Missisippi (sic) – I’m not checking [ See me after class – Editor Squirrel] ) which led to a young Annie Oakley taking centre stage.
The Meiji Emperor seeking advice on how to advance Japan to catch up with the rest of the world in the 1870s.
A young Winston Churchill on a disastrous yet ultimately successful mission to South Africa during the Boer War.

The stories are illustrated by pictures and videos (and some distracting side stories) including a number of visual jokes. The best picture was of a young Paul wearing his self-made English Civil War armour and helmet, which he wore to school for a week, apparently. We couldn’t see the scars.

Paul kept the full house engaged and laughing for the whole hour. I’m sure even people who hated history at school will get some entertainment out of this. For us history nerds, it was excellent.

5 Mistakes That Changed History is on at Assembly George Square Studios until August 25

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/5-mistakes-that-changed-history

The Late Nite PowerPoint Comedy Showcase

By Colin Flaherty

Ever since Dave Gorman searched for others with his name back in 2000, PowerPoint has become an important tool in the arsenal of comedians the world over. The Late Nite PowerPoint Comedy Showcase is a celebration of the modern slide night, featuring five guests every Thursday to Sunday, each delighting us via comedic multimedia slideshow. The evening I attended was an Aussie filled showcase (with a Kiwi for diversity).

For those with decent phone coverage (unlike I [thanks 3 mobile!]), random QR codes kept us entertained before the show proper with links to silly websites. It was a rare evening where the technology gods decided to cause trouble for them but after a deft adlibbing by our hosts, and turning it off and on again, things were soon back on track.

Our dapper hosts Sweeney Preston and Ethan Cavanagh presented some hilarious tales from when they were promoting their previous Australian show Presentation Is Everything. Throw in some singing and dancing razzle dazzle, and it was delightful introduction to the hour.

First up was Jenny Tian who presented part of her current show Chinese Australian, an eye opening look into being an Internet Influencer. Her TikTok duets were particularly delightful and a cheeky bit of audience participation was fun.

Nick Shuller gave us a collection of random silly jokes with images tacked on. He was hilarious with his droll delivery and seemed genuinely surprised by some of the images appearing behind him.

Michael Shafar told a brilliant tale of being mistakenly outed for profiting from CoVid conspiracy theories. His documentarian type slides made this crazy tale even more amusing.

Sarah Bradley gave a hilarious lecture about her research into human attractiveness. Delivered straight, it was a clever and brilliant lampoon of the Male Gaze theory and a celebration of women’s objectification of men on social media.

Alex Lowes rounded out the night with a wacky game show “Who’s That Baby”. It was ridiculously over the top and had the audience whipped in a frenzy.

The Late Nite PowerPoint Comedy Showcase is wonderful way to end your night at Fringe. Bring all your friends and have a smashing time.

The Late Nite PowerPoint Comedy Showcase is on at Assembly George Square Studios until August 24

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/late-nite-powerpoint-comedy-showcase