For its 12th year Comedy Zoo’s Late Show moves to the Cabaret Bar, providing Pleasance Courtyard with a dose of raucous late-night stand-up. Each show offers a few lesser-known acts looking to impress a new audience accompanied by a star name. This year’s show sees appearances from Andrew Maxwell, Ardal O’Hanlon, Tim Vine, and Stephen K. Amos.
MC Joe Bor kicked off proceedings with a few solid observational jokes and stories, setting the tone for the night with an amusing chat with an eager and vocal crowd. A well-oiled audience is an inevitable feature of these shows and many of the acts’ finest moments came from playing off them, not least when a hen party began to heckle a teenage boy studying dance, much to Amos’s delight. Amos is a highly polished comedian and knows how to the work the room effortlessly. He delivered a greatest hits set, riffing on topics from perceptions of race to decrying the strictness of his parents’ generation whilst ironically bemoaning the fecklessness of today’s youth.
Next up was baby-faced comedian Matt Richardson, whose set unfortunately created a slight lull in the evening’s entertainment. During his opening patter, he revealed the funniest heckle he’s ever received, which proved to be more amusing than the rest of his set. He spent a lot of time on those well-trodden subjects embarrassing parents and puberty, followed by a tame section on ‘the c-word’.
Fortunately the final act, improv comedy troupe The Noise Next Door, exploded onto stage to reinvigorate the show. Their set was like a hyperactive and risqué version of Whose Line It is Anyway? pulled off with invention and panache. Taking their cues from the crowd, they ran through a song about a clown brothel owned by – of course – Jimmy Savile, an adeptly improvised movie scene and finished off by serenading a member of the audience with a personalised ‘boyband love song’.
These shows do exactly what you expect, providing an hour and a half of solid laughs to a congenial audience. It’s a cost-effective way to see some of the bigger name stand-ups at the Fringe and, whilst there may be a dud act, you might also discover an unknown gem.
