Part of the duty of a Fringe reviewer is to tell the entire world when they’ve found the worst act in the festival, so that the rest of the public can avoid it and save themselves. Well, world, here it is, the bottom of the festival. I have planted the Broadway Baby flag into its desolate ground and claimed it for the empire, and I’ll be damned if anyone else takes the credit for my discovery.
Although you wouldn’t have known it, this was supposed to be a showcase of stand-up comedians performing on the Free Fringe. From what I could tell, Tristan Garrel Cambridge was supposed to be some sort of comedic persona-cum-compere for the afternoon, though the only segment actually pertaining to the title of the show involved an incredibly awkwardly narrated and badly made PowerPoint Presentation that bore no relation to anything else that happened within the hour. I’m still not sure what the purpose was in showing us that, to be quite honest.
Most comedians would struggle to perform properly to an audience of three, but then again, most comedians would manage to get through the first two minutes of their set without mentioning tampons. Sadly, Alan Burns couldn’t resist the temptation to unleash his best feminine hygiene gags upon the audience, and didn’t have the nous to change to lighter subject matter when he met an impenetrable wall of silence.
Tom Walsh seemed to be walking the thin line between providing a satirical mockery of bad comedians and just being a bad comedian. His set, painfully stretched out for twenty excruciating minutes was centred on a series of bafflingly poor one-liner jokes and awful physical comedy. His impression of Clint Eastwood involved riding a chair, puffing on an imaginary cigarillo and then misquoting Dirty Harry.
Whatever you decide to see this Fringe, just make sure it’s not this. I’m tainted by the experience, but you still have time enough to save yourselves.
