Fringe comedy reviews: Stuart Goldsmith: Canary | Jody Kamali: This is My Dad | Grace Campbell: The Lady Is a Tramp | Alex La: Fool as Hell | Zoe Wohlfield: Dog Funeral | Freya Parker: An Hour Of Decay!

Stuart Goldsmith in Canary | Andre Patten

COMEDY

Stuart Goldsmith: Canary ★★★★

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

While it would be unfair to suggest that Stuart Goldsmith has been coming to the Fringe since before there was a climate emergency, the festival veteran has been preparing for the worst for a while now, making it the major focus of his stand-up in recent years. As a comic respected by peers and the cognoscenti, overlooked by the mainstream, he's more than aware that as an activist too, he's facing indifference, overwhelm and denial. And he acknowledges that he's slipped into a groove as he brings back a feature of recent shows, a reprise of the safe space where he and audience members air their environmental hypocrisies, guilty admissions of not being as virtuous as possible. Beyond shifting blame from individuals back to polluting fossil fuel companies and their political supporters, this acceptance of fallibility also highlights the dangers for Goldsmith of simply fiddling while Rome burns and repeating himself until the apocalypse. Concerned friends appreciate that he's done all the scientific reading. And they, like us, are begging him for reassurance that everything is going to be ok.

Fortunately, his analogy of the canary in the coalmine is more nuanced than it initially appears. Unlike his children, who are of an age now where they're less impressed by their father's job and less eager to be mentioned in it, Goldsmith is sharing some adolescent trauma for the first time, yet reframing its effects as a boon for responding to the biggest challenge facing humanity. The laughs come easily enough, he's as personable as ever, scrutinises his niche thoroughly and is completely relatable in matters of chattering class guilt. But there's also a grim sense of purpose beneath. And hard messaging that the future remains up for grabs but it will have to be fought for. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Jody Kamali: This is My Dad ★★★

The Crate at Assembly George Square (Venue 8) until 30 August

Jody Kamali’s dad was what obituary writers call “a larger-than-life character”. A hoarder who was always earning money from a variety of sources and was always in debt to someone, he was an individual as flawed as he was fascinating.

The Iranian immigrant died suddenly after a barbecue, and for most of this show his Bristolian son inhabits his personality to paint a picture of a man about whom he still has many unanswered questions. As well as leaving behind a lot of stress-inducing life admin, the old man’s legacy as a father wasn’t entirely brilliant either.

We hear how Jody was conceived when his dad was studying in the UK, but was kept a secret from his family and friends for several years. He shares examples of parenting that was at best careless, at worst neglectful and traumatising, but also discovers a few positive acts that weren’t spoken about.

It’s an at-times painful glimpse into the life of a complex man from a son who brings him to life vividly. Moments of levity are welcomed by an engaged audience, but perhaps this show should have been placed in the theatre section. Ashley Davies

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COMEDY

Grace Campbell: The Lady Is a Tramp ★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 30 August

Self-confessed “nepo-nymphomaniac” Grace Campbell is the daughter of Alastair Campbell – the Labour spin doctor who is now a superstar political podcaster. She’s not shy about her famous father, whose name takes all of two minutes to crop up following some cursory crowdwork in her latest standup show.

A misogynistic male comedian’s unsolicited advice to swap her usual sex-heavy material for more mundane subjects is the cue for a whistle-stop tour of a typical day in the life of a privileged comedy it girl; from waking up suitably late for a dip in a London lido, to a boozy one-year-old’s birthday party, a quick dash home to the parents, and a night of debauchery at a private member’s club.

Campbell is a huge personality with talent to burn, taking to the stage like a rockstar resplendent in tartan (like her dad she’s not shy to flaunt her Scottish connections), her vocal fry South London drawl used to great effect in a set peppered with millennial references.

It’s a wild ride that has some pleasing highs but loses momentum in the middle, while a subtext of anxiety and ADHD are never explored in any real depth. There’s nothing mundane about Campbell, but there’s a feeling that she’s got far more to offer than simple caricature. David Hepburn

COMEDY

Alex La: Fool as Hell ★★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

Alex La makes a virtue of adjusting his cultural references for the UK, with an amiable, enquiring style, routinely touching base with the crowd to check that he's connecting. And he's a tad paranoid in this respect. However, the Vietnamese-American's efforts to top his Presidential jigsaw puzzle gag with its British equivalent is appreciated, as are his observations comparing Welsh and Chinese dragons, surely hitherto untapped subject matter. Happily, his long-distance relationship with an older woman living in London, complicating his studenty 32-year-old existence by turning him into a stepfather, means he ought to have greater opportunity to adjust to this country. He's guilty of overlong setups and could be snappier in his delivery generally. But he's got a casual drollness about him and closes strongly, emboldened to pull-off a blackly funny paedophile gag and 9/11 offering in rapid succession. Leading up to this, he's suggested a tricky upbringing with his parents remaining together out of spite. And a bit of isolation and racism at his first school, though his subsequent education forced him to accept that he may have been the problem. With appealing autobiographical material, La's wider observations just need a little more refinement. Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Zoe Wohlfield: Dog Funeral ★★★

Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

After filling us in with a cute video of hand-drawn pictures of her childhood dog, Twinkles (RIP), Zoe Wohlfield enters in Victorian widow’s weeds. We’re all part of a funeral.

The Gaulier-trained clown plays with ideas of death and sadness, putting her expressive face and expansive eyes to great service, and using her often wordless charisma to encourage audience participation.

Sure, she looks like an adult, but the devices she deploys – from water pistols to bring on “tears” to a music box she mimics with a grotesquely open mouth, plus some babyish expressions of sadness – stem from childhood, which is clearly where her grief lives.

If you’re not into clown or prefer your comedy verbal, this might not be the show for you, but if you’re interested in a playful, visually captivating study of mourning, how that heartbreak of loss can look from the outside, and how every creature deserves to be mourned, it’s well worth your time. Ashley Davies

COMEDY

Freya Parker: An Hour Of Decay! ★★★

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 30 August

Like many female actors of a certain age, Freya Parker is grappling with the roles drying up for her. Part of a more general existential wobble about the state of the world and her place in it, the comic's fears have been exacerbated by the creeping arrival of AI in her industry, her unfortunate sharing of a name with a high-profile porn star and the fact that the baby-faced, cutesy identifying Parker is finally having to face up to ageing, not least as she's now a mother to children herself. Alarmed by the invasiveness of new technology, she offers a convincing impression of someone clinging to sanity by her fingernails, suspicious that she's far from alone. Having made her name in sketch, there's a mannered, performative quality to her stand-up that's initially distancing as it feels so affected. But as you tune in to it, it decorates Parker's observations, animating and enlivening the relatable signs of getting older, the world leaving you behind. Her double act Lazy Susan had an unblinking feminism underpinning their sketches. And she's carried that in to her solo comedy, calling out the misogyny she perceives, attracting plentiful laughs in her caustic mockery of it. Jay Richardson

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