Comedy troupes on parade

The Kagools - Claire Ford & Nicola Wilkinson

This year’s Fringe boasts a massive comedy section bursting with originality.
Last year’s Comedy Show Award-winners, The Kagools, are back with their family-friendly, non-verbal comedy, a hoot from start to finish, and one half of The Kagools, Claire Ford will be doing some clowning of her own in her new show Unboxed. The other Kagool, Nicola Wilkinson, will also be stepping out as a solo act, her show Happy offering stand-up, party games, and, intriguingly, pies.

Fringe comics routinely cross genre boundaries with Nathan & Ida’s Hot Dog Stand offering clowning, mime and dance from the stars of The Dead Secrets, and The Big Fat Running Show using live music, songs and comedy to look at running culture. The Shrimps: Prawn Stars will meanwhile use audience suggestions to come up with lively improvisation, fun and games.
The spirit of farce can be felt in KinkyBoot Institute’s Cheaters: A Play about Infidelity while storytelling is at the heart of TMT’s My Friend Tony and the Tiny Circle of Love.

Comedy does not have to be frivolous. Steve Day: Adventures in Dementia is a bittersweet exploration of his father’s Alzheimer’s while Mandy Toothill’s Twin Peaks finds the comic laughing in the face of breast cancer. Professional gambling is the subject of Ross Brierley’s Accumulator, with Steve Vertigo looking at the power of data and AI in his topical show As Far As I Can See.

Aidan Goatley’s The Vicar’s Husband explores what happens when an atheist’s wife trains as a vicar, causing him to question his true purpose. There is more mental turmoil in the fast-paced and visual Id Ego Superego from Col Howarth.
Whole worlds can be evoked in comedy shows, whether it is a Welsh village fete in Karen Sherrard’s warm-hearted A Fete Worse Than Death or something altogether more extra-terrestrial in Gemma Arrowsmith’s Earthling, pondering what aliens did with the earth mementos sent up by NASA in 1977.

The comedy category at this year’s Buxton Festival Fringe is the biggest ever with 42 separate events. See buxtonfringe.org.uk for full details of everything in this exciting section.

The Fringe wishes to thank its sponsor The University of Derby as well as financial supporters The Trevor Osborne Charitable Trust and High Peak Borough Council, its Fringe Friends and the town’s many Fringe supporters and venues.


Buxton Fringe

Website: www.buxtonfringe.org.uk
Facebook: buxtonfringe
Twitter: @buxtonfringe