Despite being Nathan Caton's first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe, he talks with such authority and ease that you could easily mistake him for a Fringe veteran. Apart from an ill-judged and over-long introductory voiceover, the show is full to the brim with comic talent and a flair for working the crowd. It is easy to see why he has previously won the Chortle Student Comic Award and had his debut comedy pilot The Nathan Caton Show aired on Paramount Television. The only sign of nerves was a sense of randomly shuffling around the stage, yet his voice remained confident and authoritive throughout; I am sure this will sort itself out with a few more performances under his belt.Caton's stand-up routine has an impressive structure to it, lending a particular edge of clarity to the piece. He has certain hooks that he keeps coming back to graduating, finding a job, his parents and brother and this helps bind everything together into a unified form. The topics lead naturally into each other, helped by both his good sense of pace and the intimacy of the venue. The close proximity of the seats creates more of a conversational feel between Caton and the audience, who were lapping it all up on this occasion.Without spoiling any of his routine, sections on being ginger, girls wearing their boyfriends' t-shirts and the similarities between paedophiles and diabetics brought the biggest laughs, and had me chuckling well after the show. Some of the gags brought a few gasps from certain members of the audience but, to his credit, Caton managed to reel them back in within the same joke to actually laugh even louder and the eventual (and even filthier) pay off. Caton also includes impressions of some of the people he mentions, including his grandmother, providing some distinct visual humour in addition to his constant stream of verbal gags. Indeed, at the performance I watched virtually every sentence achieved a laugh somewhere, and absolutely nothing bombed, largely due to some fantastic payoffs at the end of sections; no mean feat for a first Fringe show.This may have been Caton's first solo Fringe show but I have no doubts that it will not be his last. Since watching the show I have heard his name mentioned by several people wanting to see his show. I advise you to book now.
