Double Edinburgh Preview

A bit of a different night tonight in the sense that we only had two acts on. However, both were acts that had headlined (and stormed) XS Malarkey in the past, both were doing an hour each of their Edinburgh shows. And first up was Aussie comic Sarah Kendall.

After a slightly ropey start (partially due to a slightly lethargic crowd) Sarah got into the swing of her set with some familiar material about train delays and missing girls, followed by some new material, including a great gag about tuneless rapper 50 Cent (featuring some amusing dancing). Altogether there was 45 minutes of solid material which, while it didn't set the room alight (largely because the crowd weren't as up for it as usual) it was certainly entertaining and funny enough for an Edinburgh show. A particular highlight was the adverts halfway through the show.

After the break the second of the two acts tonight was another Malarkey favourite, Natalie Haynes.

Natalie opened up with some new material about allergies and the Atkins diet in her typically energetic way, and went on to other material about cheese and a particularly risky (but very funny) gag about Alder Hey hospital (the phrase "Cot Death Bingo" was superb). A lot of her material has a point of some kind (political or otherwise) but manages to be funny without coming across as preachy, a trick some other comics fail to do. It was quite impressive just how much material she managed to pack into 45 minutes or so, most of it hitting the mark with the audience.

So a good night in all, but perhaps not quite as good as I was expecting, almost as if the audience were tired or wary of laughing like drains.

Spider.