Elf Lyons
It’s usually tricky to effectively describe a show by Elf Lyons. Her Fringe act this year, “Elf Lyons Is the Woman on the Edge,” is no different, but at its core it’s about a breakup — a raw, high-concept retelling of the upheaval she suffered when her fiancé broke up with her via WhatsApp message.
Lyons, who trained as a clown, appears disheveled in a cocktail dress, standing on tiptoes the whole time to suggest high heels. She lip syncs to real voice notes and enlists an audience member to read a monologue about the relationship. There’s also a song made up of actual obnoxious things that men have said to her.
Lyons is a staple of the Fringe, known for sellout hours like these that push clowning in new directions. This one, which is billed as a comedy, has an emotional climax that packs an additional punch. The show I caught ended with a standing ovation and some audience members in tears. — JILLIAN RAYFIELD
Through Aug. 31 at Pleasance Courtyard, then Sept. 24 through Oct. 18 at the SoHo Playhouse in New York.
Frankie McNair
Every year, comedians at the Fringe try to turn personal trauma into comedy gold.
When this year’s festival began, the media spotlight was on Amanda Knox’s attempt to do that with a show about how a false murder conviction has shaped her life. But at the end of the first week, critics are raving about Frankie McNair, an Australian comedian whose show “Huge Ass Mindset” turns her childhood experiences of sexual abuse into a hilarious, inspiring and shocking hour.
This spring, McNair was among the nominees for best show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. “Don’t be surprised if she is nominated for best show here, too,” Steve Bennett, the editor of the British comedy website Chortle, said in an interview at the Fringe.
McNair said the show, which she’s performing after being in therapy for 12 years, was more open and vulnerable that any of her previous work. “I wanted to show the impacts of surviving child sexual assault, which is incredibly common,” she said, “but then also the fact that it can get better.”
She said that child sex abuse should be openly talked about — even in comedy. If that happens, McNair added, perpetrators are “less likely to get away with it.” — ALEX MARSHALL
Through Aug. 30 at Gilded Balloon Teviot.
Joseph Morpurgo
About 10 years ago, Joseph Morpurgo bought a 1970 American high school yearbook at a rummage sale. Since then, he’s mined its depths to make “Highlander 70,” a zippy, tightly crafted comedy show about an overachieving student’s quest to find love in the last days before graduation.
Using a slide show of black-and-white photos from the yearbook, and turning its subjects into characters and its oddities into punchlines, Morpurgo invents a world within the school using multimedia elements, musical interludes and audience participation, with appreciative nods to yearbook ads from Jim’s Steak and Spaghetti House.
Morpurgo is a cult Fringe figure who had a series of award-winning shows after his 2013 debut. But he more or less disappeared from the scene in 2017, and this is his first new Fringe show since then. It was hotly anticipated by those in the know, and a five-star review plus sellout shows suggest that he’s living up to the hype. — JILLIAN RAYFIELD
Through Aug. 30 at Pleasance Courtyard, then Sept. 29 through Oct. 17 at Soho Theater in London.
Bella Hull
Cast members and writers from the British “Saturday Night Live” are everywhere at this year’s Fringe, and audiences are snapping up their tickets.
But Bella Hull, a writer for the show, is proving to be a standout with “Mad Cow Disease,” a fast-talking and frenzied show that Hull has described as “a little bit Bridget Jonesy.” It tackles well-worn topics like family, relationships and mental illness, but in cutting and unexpected ways.
She kicks off her stand-up show off with some amusingly aggressive crowd work, asking audience members intrusive questions about their last trip to the doctor. She’s also got bits about an ant infestation in her apartment, why she relates to terrorists and an episode in which she imagines that Kate Middleton is her mother.
Hull’s show last Fringe was also a big hit, and this year she has extra momentum from “S.N.L.” and her appearances on “Have I Got News for You,” a BBC comedy panel show. She’s been selling out — not so easy at a 12:30 p.m. slot. — and Tina Fey even popped by on Day 1 of the festival. — JILLIAN RAYFIELD
Through Aug. 30 at Monkey Barrel Comedy.
Sam Eley
Sam Eley’s show is not for people who like an early night — it starts at 11:25 p.m. — but the hour, in which Eley performs wearing a huge papier-mâché head, is a must-see for comedy fans.
He’s performing as Basil Crumbwick, an aging man with bloodshot eyes who happily tells the packed audience about his out-there world views, his loneliness and his attempts to beat the blues by befriending his local trash collector.
Eley, 32, said in an interview that he had started performing as Crumbwick two years ago when he became tired of doing regular stand-up. Initially, he did the character while wearing a mask that he’d bought while on vacation in Mexico.
The head is freeing comedically, Eley said, but it has its downside: “It gets like a rainforest in there by the time I take it off.”
He has now added an extra show to meet demand at the more reasonable hour of 7:35 p.m. But if you can’t secure a ticket for Eley, head to Maya Ricote’s “Ay Am!,” another late-night concoction in which Ricote, a former Mexican telenovela star, portrays a surgically enhanced Latin diva trying to secure her dream acting role. It’s as dramatic, passion-fueled and silly as the best Latin soap operas. — ALEX MARSHALL
Through Aug. 30 at Monkey Barrel Comedy.
‘The Distance’
“The Distance” is an autobiographical one-man play, written and performed by Ben Norris, a former long-distance runner whose sports career was prematurely ended by a serious injury. It caught the eye at this year’s Fringe because of the remarkable physicality of Norris’s performance, which combines storytelling with constant athletic movement.
The set features a treadmill inside a large cube of iron scaffolding. When Norris isn’t running on the machine, he is clambering daredevilishly on the bars. At one point he hangs upside-down by his feet, like a bat.
This is all in service to Norris’s portrait of Chris, a precociously talented British youngster who excels in cross-country runs and eventually gets a call-up for the national athletics squad. But when his knee gives out, shattering his dream of representing his country at the 2012 Olympics in London, Chris is plunged into depression.
Norris has been making theater since 2015, and while his virtuosic exertions bring the story to life, evoking endurance and endeavor, the script is also impressively taut. This is no novelty act.
And when Norris enlists an audience member to play the role of Chris’s mother in several ad-libbed exchanges, the effect is surprisingly poignant. Norris’s Fringe debut is an absorbing coming-of-age tale delivered with a winning, understated charisma. — HOUMAN BAREKAT
Through Aug. 31. at Summerhall.
‘The Plot’
When “The Plot” begins, the brothers Tom and Robert Wintour are wallowing in purgatory after their grisly execution for trying to blow up the British Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Over the next hour, we revisit that conspiracy — a real historical event that Britons commemorate every year with a fireworks night named after one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes — through a series of time-hopping set pieces.
Sophie Kean and Abby McCann play the Wintour brothers as well as several other figures including Edward Coke, the attorney general who prosecuted the plotters, and King James I, who was their No. 1 target. The material has some historical resonance for the locals among the Fringe audience, since James I was also James VI of Scotland, the first Scot to become king of England. (He was born in nearby Edinburgh Castle.)
The show’s writer and director, Emma Howlett, enjoys a growing reputation in British theater circles as an intellectually ambitious dramatist whose ideas-driven plays explore questions of narrative, power and knowledge. Stylishly rendered, with spooky lighting, quasi-period garb, “The Plot” is both an inquiry into the psychology of political extremism and a meditation on mythmaking. — HOUMAN BAREKAT
Through Aug. 31 at Summerhall.
Mark Watson
As one of Britain’s most beloved comedians, Mark Watson could cruise this year’s Fringe by selling out a simple stand-up hour. But instead he’s staging his first children’s show.
It’s aimed at 5- to 12-year-olds, and Watson promises to teach them “everything you’ll ever need to know for the rest of your life.” But his bizarre “classes” often descend into chaos, with the uninhibited younger audiences far more likely than adult crowds to heckle — or even invade his stage.
The show has become a hit, with so many intrigued adults buying tickets that Watson has added extra, higher-capacity gigs.
The comedian said in an interview that after he came up with the idea to do a children’s show, his impulse was to fill it with clowning and visual gags. But then he decided he “didn’t want to patronize kids by assuming they just want to see me covered in baked beans.”
Watson, 46, said he felt like he was starting out again, “which at my age is a fun novelty.” There was just one thing he had to remind himself: not to insult the children. “I had a girl take almost a minute to answer a question a few days ago,” he said, “and it started off agonizing but went around to being funny, because the rest of the crowd could see me desperately wanting to cut her off.” — ALEX MARSHALL
Through Aug. 16 at Pleasance Courtyard.
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