Jake Lambert, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Jake Lambert warms up the audience by describing how much he enjoyed lockdown (despite a relationship break-up), and he suspects that football players enjoyed playing for a season without spectators too – “Whose job wouldn't be improved by removing thousands of people calling you a wanker?”But the pandemic is not the thrust of Liminal, merely the way into its main theme. Lambert has epilepsy (a subject he has addressed before in his comedy), and tells a touching story – punctuated by big laughs – about how he came to be diagnosed, and the help Read more ...

 Hal Cruttenden, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Hal Cruttenden is the kind of observational comic who talks about his home life a lot, so when his wife announced recently that their marriage was over it could have meant a quick swerve away from the personal stuff. But as it's an amicable break (they're still living in the same house) he can talk about it on stage.In It's Best You Hear It From Me Cruttenden details the pitfalls of long marriages, advancing middle age and now the awful prospect of being back on the dating scene. He poses the important questions of who gets the house, who Read more ...

Randy Feltface, Assembly George Square ★★★★ Despite being made of felt, with a gash for a mouth and two googly eyes, Randy Feltface (always seen in the vicinity of Heath McIvor) can, astonishingly, appear to emote. Of course, he can't – we are feeling the emotions – but in response to what Randy is saying, whether it's serious or silly. It's an astonishing trick to pull off, and McIvor does it brilliantly.Randy's latest outing, Alien of Extraordinary Ability, tackles some big subjects, not least what humans are doing to our planet, and how we have wasted the chance to reset that the Read more ...

Ania Magliano, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Ania Magliano is debuting at the Fringe with Absolutely No Worries If Not, an hour that explores her sexual awakening. She has only recently realised she's bisexual, which means she still likes straight culture. “I think All Bar One is a great space,” she say drily.Magliano, an instantly likeable presence on stage, used to work in Lush – cue some cruel but very funny descriptions of those who work and shop there – and talks about her time at an all-girls boarding school. She describes the two kinds of girl it produces – those who had eating Read more ...

Sara Barron, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Sara Barron is known for her no-holds-barred comedy style – or “American energy” as another mum at her son’s school calls it – but in her fast-paced new show she pushes even further, addressing as she does her fertility treatment and a miscarriage.But Hard Feelings is not sad, far from from it. It is an hour of often raucous comedy, telling it like it is, whether that’s about the reality of sex in a long-term marriage, dirty bums or frenemies.She warms up the audience – Barron does great crowd work – with some observational shtick Read more ...

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Wearing a heavily sequinned leotard - she thought this was how we’d all dress after “living in trackies during lockdown” - Kiri Pritchard-McLean wants to address some very serious subjects, such as racism, imperialism and white privilege. But first she wants to deliver some funnies, and there are lots of them in Home Truths, a show bursting with energy and ideas.She’s a proud Welshwoman (the leotard has the Welsh flag on it, and she performs in front of a sign reading Môn Mam Cymru  - Anglesey, mother of Wales) and, having moved back a few Read more ...

Colin Hoult: The Death of Anna Mann, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★★ Anna Mann – actress, singer, welder (you’ve got to have a back-up in this business, darling) – is the monstrous creation of Colin Hoult.She was last seen at the Fringe five years ago and now returns, but with sad news; she’s dying, her heart being “just too full”. As she nears the end, Anna gives us a potted biography – she describes her poor upbringing in Nottingham where her only toy was a stick, her many marriages and affairs with ridiculously named suitors, her daughter Mahogany and her, er, stellar acting career, Read more ...

 Tiff Stevenson, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Tiff Stevenson doesn’t like labels, and is particularly irritated by how the once mildly mocking insult “Karen” is now just another misogynistic slur. So she invented a label for herself, Sexy Brain, which is the title of her show, and over the hour she explains how she arrived at itShe suffers from ADHD, or rather she diagnosed herself with it after failing to complete a bunch of online surveys (a symptom, apparently), and decided she has a sexy brain. Sexy as in mysterious – you know, the way women are supposed to be.Much of this is Read more ...

Sikisa is a new name on the comedy scene, but trust me you'll hearing and seeing a lot more of the south Londoner with Barbadian roots. Twerk in Progress, her in-progress version of her debut show Life of the Party, is a winning mixture of autobiography and social comment.She is an energetic performer and barely pauses for breath in the hour – even in the dance breaks she's exerting herself across the balloon-strewn stage – as she delivers her thoughts on house parties, feminism, dick picks and much more.Sikisa is, she tells us, the life and soul of parties, and the show is about the Read more ...

Joe Lycett’s career was on an upward trajectory when he took on hosting duties on The Great British Sewing Bee, and the crafting show delivered a whole new audience for his live comedy. But anybody thinking that his sweet-natured wit was all there was to Lycett might be taken aback by some of his stand-up material.And so it proves in his new show, More, More, More! How Do You Lycett? How Do You Lycett? (a title he says was foisted on him by his agent), which was Covid-delayed and contains a section referencing a “giant donkey dick” – which some humourless person referred to the police, a Read more ...

Irony can be a trump card for a provocative comic such as Ricky Gervais, and he plays it right at the top of his SuperNature, an updated version of a show he started touring in 2019, which was rudely interrupted by the pandemic and is now his latest Netflix special. “Irony, where I say things I don’t mean. There’s going to be a lot of that throughout the show,” he says, launching into a clever skit purportedly saying women aren’t funny, but which then moves on to, for some, the most pressing issue of the day, self-ID.“I love the new women, Gervais says. “They’re great, aren’t they? The Read more ...

Andy Zaltzman comes on stage to deliver a short preamble to his show Satirist For Hire. Much of the hour is suggested by the audience as they choose subjects they want him to muse on. Some have emailed before they arrive, others have left it till they arrive at the theatre; one shouts out a suggestion from the bar. Zaltzman leaves the stage for a few minutes to write some notes and then returns for the show proper.The performance is purportedly about the comic being on a mission to try to solve the world's problems with satire. But Zaltzman won't over-promise – after all, he says, the Read more ...