Poker Party (Bill & Andrea Bondage Adventures)

Tropes in this game:

From the very start, Zahra has a strong confidence in her material and a great command of the room. Her show takes in a whole host of topics — from growing up as a female in Saudi Arabia, to dating, the MeToo movement and Repeal the 8th — there are plenty of hard-hitting moments in this show, and many dark jokes to go alongside them, but Barri has an instant charm that always makes the audience feel at ease, that this is a safe space in which to explore powerful concepts and ideas.

Zahra also has plenty to say about the pitfalls of social media. There is a great structure to the narrative of this show, coupled with her self-assured delivery, brings a fantastic energy into the room. Zahra is not a princess; this show proves she is a warrior of comedy. The entire room was attentive, expectant.

Abbie brings an hour of comedy about getting older, the intrusiveness of technology in modern life and about her time working as a performer on a cruise ship. All the time, there is an undercurrent to these stories — a powerful tone of feminism upon which the narrative hangs.

Abbie wonderfully flips the conventions that desperately need flipping with hard-line and jet black humour, not afraid to cut through the stereotypes with sharp teeth. All the while, this is a show about always being who you are and chasing your dreams. Abbie has a tremendous talant for finding the sideways perspective, bringing a different view to some very important themes. Gabriel takes to the stage first, with a good amount of energy and charm to welcome the audience into his world.

His comedy is sharp, flipping the conventions of racism and appearance. There are stories about how he was bullied growing up but Gabriel always presents a light-heartedness to his anecdotes. When Sam takes to the stage, there is a different energy — his is more laid back and presents a different perspective to the themes from the first half, looking at another side of racism and judging people by their appearances.

The room was warm so ice water was to be dispensed if anyone said the safe word. I loved that touch. Charmian Hughes also went to the trouble of making fans from her flyers. Friendly, considerate, thoughtful and quick thinking. These qualities come though in her material too so that her audiences see a well thought out, funny, delightful show that makes you feel good and makes you think. There is no option but to love it.

Hughes is very charismatic and has a superb way of telling the beautifully written stories and material. Everyone in the room is completely invested and really enjoying themselves no matter what age or gender they are or identify as. It is a performance that really encapsulates all of the frustrations, trials and triumphant feeling felt in seeking a sexy, supportive, non-bank account breaking bra.

So, the show itself. We were all laughing, but quite strangely at different times, picked off by her punchline sniper rifle. Mansplaining Feminism Talbot is a great feminist. From the very start of the show, to the vox pops from well-known faces that are dotted throughout this hour of sharply-written sketch comedy, this is never in doubt. One very strong narrative that runs through this show is that Rosie Holt just wants a compliment on her physical appearance — one compliment in particular.

Both simmering beneath this show and in full plain view are many important lessons that everybody needs to learn — about judging people on physical appearances, about how to fundamentally act around other people, about treating each other with respect. All of these lessons are presented by two performers whose energy, chemistry and passion radiates from the stage. The sketches themselves are perfectly written and timed, ranging from a beautiful parody of periods, original sin in the garden of Eden to how social media can draw out and blow up the smallest of disagreements.

There is no doubt that this is a very important show, absolutely on point with the long-overdue movements sweeping society today. Holt and Talbot bring all of this to their show with amazing craft, wisdom and intelligence. It's , where every other comedian is discussing feminism and political correctness Rosie Holt and Christian Talbot provide some kind of escapism with imaginative sketches parodying the issues.

Fast-paced, fun and light-hearted, Mansplaining Feminism looks at the likes of internet dating, right-wing grandparents, catcalling, the use of social media to expose foibles and a woman's physical features through a range of well thought-out, tongue-in-cheek, closely observed sketches. Videos covering changes feature fellow comics telling him: Talbot is the more shy and understated, projecting a sense of insecurity, while Holt is the more committed performer: The crowd in this packed sweaty room concur, having as much fun as the performers clearly are. He has a distinctive look, and an infectious style.

He is as home working the audience as he is in delivering his well-crafted set and even in these latter days of the Fringe is still packing out his venue on a daily basis. But he needs our help. He has had Twitter spats with a number of people and organisations and has been blocked by them, hence unable to vent his views further. It is not a one way street though.

Mor goes through the early minutes finding out about his audience, there are a large number of repeat attenders but it is a chatty lot, just the kind of gig he thrives on, in fact he says he prefers weird gigs. It has to be said the room was behind him with everything he said. Mor is a class act, always has been, and at the very top of his games. Mr Kearse is, as he acknowledges in the show, deliberately provocative with some of his statements and viewpoints, coming across variously as rampantly self-interested, prone to generalisations and stereotypes, and with a penchant for punching down rather than up.

He does also however, aim his ire at both the right and the left, highlighting stupidity on both sides. Structurally, the show works well, with gentle transitions between stories indicators and gear changes, rather than handbrake turns and everything linked to a coherent central theme. He makes a valid and well-argued point about making space for all points of view — even if they are distasteful — and on that we do agree. Huge If True Paul Foxcroft has all the confidence you would expect from a man who has improvised with the best for most of his career.

But this is tightly scripted stuff. There will, one day, be an incredibly dark hour from Foxcroft on his relationship with his family, and it is hinted at all through this one, adding a little frisson of danger to an otherwise well-mannered show. We wind down with a few moments pondering the worth of reviews, illustrated by reading a few from public review websites before ramping up the excitement to eleven with that game of FinaleQuest.

I might just keep going until I get to play, it is ridiculous amounts of fun. This is his first solo hour, amazingly, and it is a cleverly-crafted mix of comedy genres. Not many performers can pull this off but he does so with aplomb. Still, he seems justifiably peeved that a tour he was booked on referenced his crash in its advertising. Along the way we are treated to a contemporizing tour of his personal zeitgeist; Brexit, Tube Travel, potentially imminent fatherhood, racism — all of which varied in quality, but was entertaining enough.

My instinct tells me that if Daniel can weave a show where his jokes bounce off the audience interactions, a rainbow may sunder the sky along which path should lie his comedy gold. Melt In his stand-up show Melt, Dave Green projects himself as a slightly incompetent, slightly unconfident Everyman, stressing the small stuff. Luckily for his comedy, the upside of overthinking even the most mundane of everyday situations also applies to gags, giving them a quirky edge. They are pithy and offbeat, and this show establishes him as a keen writer who approaches the everyday from a different angle.

Yet they come from such an obvious place of love, they cannot possibly taken the wrong way. Even though he is still alive, the comic sometimes refers to him in the past tense, so far has the man he knew faded. While this is heartbreaking, Day focuses almost entirely on painting a portrait of what manner of man his dad was.

Primarily he was a grafter who had to work for everything. But Conor Drum has turned some of the most cringe-inducing memories of his time in a band into something valuable — the backbone of this highly entertaining hour of anecdotes. He had been a happy-go-lucky, if mischievous, child — albeit one who managed to get kept back a year in playschool and went on to indulge in some dangerously unsupervised experiments with his best pal.

But he seemed to undergo a transformation into a sullen greasy-haired, angst-ridden rocker almost overnight. The ravers who bullied him in his Dublin school called him Mmmbop, because they thought his long hair made him look like the band Hanson, while his parents were clearly controlling Nazis who never let him do anything.

Melt Solidly enjoyable stand-up comedy with flashes of brilliance. The structure here is worthy of a seasoned professional comic, and the delivery is as confident and assured as they come. While his interactions with the audience feel a little forced on occasion, it is clear that Green is generally a relaxed and confident performer, more than adequately prepared by his already relatively illustrious comedy career to make his somewhat belated Edinburgh Fringe debut. The promotional material for Melt is misleading in some other key ways.

Appropriately, Eat Sleep Shit Shag is an hour of amusing anecdotes undercut with mock bitterness that serve to give her comedy an acerbic aftertaste. With her strong Essex accent and breakneck pace, her delivery is both a boon and a drawback; her high energy levels ensure that the tempo remains upbeat despite the often pessimistic subject matter, but the rapid-fire diction makes it difficult to keep up at times. The same can be said for her overall demeanour. Her rants are imbued with impeccable comic insight and her prickly dryness is what gives the material punch, but the contempt often spills over into standoffishness, leaving the audience unsure of the ground they stand on.

For a show that relies heavily on her catalogue of failures failure to get a mortgage, a marriage, 2. Yet Cardwell succeeds in creating a warm feeling the room, a cocoon of empathy amid the drunken hedonism outside the door. Our host for the hour is Sylvia Sceptre — real name Careena Fenton — and it's never quite explained whether she's a medium, a spirit guide, or one of the deceased themselves. But whatever her role, she's a bright and capable character, filling the crypt-like performance space with both wit and conjuring skill.

The magic is well-worked, and at times genuinely befuddling; there's an emphasis on mind-reading, as befits the theme of seeing the world from the other side of the veil. Fenton is kind and generous with those she gets up on-stage, always understanding that it's her job to make her volunteers look good, and she has instant in-character responses to the minor distractions of a free-festival venue. A couple of the big set-piece tricks are really quite similar to each other, but there's enough of a twist in their presentation that I'll let that point pass by.

Some humour is provided by an invisible psychic cat — if you've got the imagination, Fenton's patter and performance will make you believe it's really there in the room — and there's a stonker of a prop hiding under an intriguingly-draped tablecloth. The background music's well-judged too, striking enough to set the atmosphere, but used sparingly enough that it doesn't become intrusive.

Our Kid There can be no doubt that Stephen Bailey is a comedian who is going places. Stephen Bailey is in evidence from the start, getting people seated explaining the format and them we are off into an hour of him at his very best. Bailey shies away from much involvement in current affairs, he is more intent in talking about family, friends, his gays, friend Natalie, dating and interacting with the audience. He is a blatant flirt, chatting to two men in particular, one gay, one straight currently, he adds and gets piles and piles of laughs from everyone there.

His early life is briefly included as are a couple of his amours, he can say things that a different comic may cause offence with but such is his charisma nobody can object in anyway. However, his particular brand of observational comedy with crisp one-liners is refreshing and original. He is able to talk about a whole range of subjects, from suicide to Brexit, from sport to reality TV with a fantastic speed and sharpness. His easy charm on the stage disarms the audience, particularly when his comedy pushes on potentially awkward topics, such as anxiety.

The levity in his humour can push through boundaries in a daring way without ever making the audience feel uncomfortable. This is an hour of self-aware and intelligent comedy from Alex Kealy which weaves between a whole range of subjects seamlessly. This is a bold and daring comedian that should not be missed.

Hail Mary There are so many strong shows at the Edinburgh Fringe this year it is easy for some to get overlooked by reviewers. Sean McLoughlin doesn't seem to have had many critics in so far but he doesn't seem to be having much difficulty getting fans into his show. I had to squeeze into the back for this one and watch it on a bench facing the wrong way.

It was worth the stiff neck though. McLoughlin has become a Fringe regular in recent years and is the epitome of the skilful stand-up. He is self-mocking but sharp and confident, angry but not to the extent that it gets on your nerves. He also looks the part. Imagine if Lionel Messi had decided to go on a crash diet, not sleep for a week, don a shirt and jacket and lurk in a basement in Edinburgh for August.

McLoughlin clearly knows what he is doing. Hail Mary is initially about getting older, about your ambitions not working out as you had planned. It is also about our obsession wth technology and how our humanity is being relentlessly taken over by social media and perhaps we don't even realise it.

He's mad as hell and not going to take it any more, but first of all he is going to make us laugh. He cuts an incredible charming and likeable figure on the stage, dotting his set with audience interactions that never makes those members feel uncomfortable. He is a comedian with a clear pedigree of writing well-crafted jokes, with a clarity and confidence of delivery that is at the height of the profession — even with jokes that he self-admittedly only wrote that morning, making this even more impressive. Inevitably, a show about falling in love and all the foibles around it — Daniel is trying to be a better person for his new partner — there are lots of jokes about sex which are presented in a very accessible way and never strays into uncomfortable territory.

His comedic talents also turn very well to fantastic word play and the flipping of the tropes and convention associated with love. This show is a fantastic way to start the day at the Fringe, a highly enjoyable and hilarious hour of comedy that needs to be seen. Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature From the very beginning of this show, with Nathaniel welcoming the audience into the room with an easy and warm charm, it is clear that he is an expert performer.

This is a show about how his lead to the break up of his relationship and how this is his first Edinburgh show since then. It is a show that explores the paths and avenues of artistry, full of sideways glances at a wide array of subjects — the influential figures in his life such as David Bowie, Coco Pops and pretty much everything in between.

Every moment is well-constructed, moves with purpose and confidence and displays exactly what the performer is capable of. Nathaniel Metcalfe has put together a show here that has everything. There is superb use of multimedia — a break-down of a bizarre Jeremy Irons interview and subsequent return later in the show is a particular highlight. This was a hour of comedy that was an absolute pleasure to be part of.

He has a great story-telling style, which builds his own narrative throughout the show and leaves room for big, silly jokes while still moving round dark corners. When his does meander away from the light, his warmth and friendliness reassures the audience that everything is still OK, and that there is a big, daft laugh right around the corner.

He has a good talent for bringing the crowd along with him on his journey. His relaxed style is the perfect night-cap to a day at the Fringe, easy-going comedy with an edge that will round off your day in the right way. The stories told will change from performance to performance, as is the nature of the structure; one the night I was in attendance, there were stories of drunken excess, new loves and heartbreak that spanned the globe from Australia to South America.

There is a brutal honesty to the stories that are being told by Aidan, engaging with a great blend of easy charm. Sometimes, the stories pushed on the taboo, with tales of sex, but these are dealt with a sensitivity that never puts the audience on edge.

• .
• Multiplication For Beginners (Multiplication Table 1-10 For Kids).
• .
• The Power of Countertransference: Innovations in Analytic Technique;
• .
• Männer in zweifacher Nacht (German Edition)!

Aidan carries the structure of the show with a great energy that brings the audience along with him on his adventures, stepping in to the levity of situations while finding the darker side of things as well. His 18 months of backpacking around Australia, Myanmar, Kuala Lumpur and others form the basis of his likeable hour of standup, which keeps its audience chuckling appreciatively even if it never quite takes off.

His anecdotes of minimum-wage bar work, dealing with hecklers and having his beard stroked in foreign cities are always good fun, but start to feel digressionary, even rambling, as the hour goes on. Logan is an affable guy with great comic delivery, but his show is definitely wanting tighter focus. It's bad news, I'm afraid: World War III has broken out, and we're the last few survivors to have made it down to this cramped and sealed bunker. But all's not lost, for we have a stout-hearted guide to lead us through the coming darkness; a strong, inspiring, practical woman, who won't let the little matter of nuclear Armageddon disrupt her well-ordered life.

Or at least… she seems to see it that way. The woman in question is Lotta Quizeen, the long-time alter ego of performer Katie Richardson, whose Thatcheresque imperiousness and love of domestic regimen make her the ideal candidate to organise a brave new world underground. She has roles in mind for all of us, and she's stockpiled plenty of cake mix; and if this all seems a touch gender-stereotyped for your taste, don't worry, she's sorted out the generator too.

But her son Hugo's been out on patrol, and he's really quite late returning. He'll be all right, of course.

• .
• Conflicting Hearts.
• .
• Lavenir de lautomobile (Hors collection) (French Edition)?
• Heavy Horses 1 Shire Horse?
• Breaking Free.

He's just a bit delayed. The story that follows is cleverly constructed, with hints of something even darker than nuclear winter poking at the edges of Lotta's mind. Unexplained motifs — from her obsession with the wild dogs hunting outside, to her out-of-place musings on forgiveness — together suggest there's something about Lotta's recent history which she isn't quite letting on. By the end, when it's all snapped into place, we have a renewed understanding of how she came to be in this bunker, and of what life after the bomb went off might actually mean to her.

He recently turned 30 and has slipped to fourth in the Google search results after: In a hysterical hour of comedy Hail Mary explores faith, love and technology as religion. He played the Royal Albert Hall a couple of months ago but finds himself performing a free Fringe show in a basement and wonders how he got here. Technology has also impacted on his love life — he was in a long-distance relationship for a year and relied on tech to keep the romance alive.

If a joke ever fails to land, he becomes bitter which is often funnier than the dud gag itself. The set finishes with an exploration of religion from the perspective of a lapsed Catholic who has recently rediscovered his faith. The comic then skilfully ties the narrative about technology and religion together with the audience laughing and whooping to the end.

He provides a high energy, solidly funny gig to hoards of people who have flocked to see him on word of mouth recommendations alone. One day, Lee Kyle found himself kicking potatoes into the sea, and he's got the video evidence to prove it. The route that led him to believing this was a productive and typical way to spend an afternoon is outlined in an hour propelled via his genial and warmhearted persona.

Multiple sequences evidence an ability to comically work through novel ideas, even if sometimes these are stretched beyond their limits. A reworking of the alphabet is initially funny, then outstays its welcome, then reasserts its comic value through a well-structured payoff. Another section about repeated sounds in words could do with some trimming too, even though it is testament to a creative comic mind. Indeed, there's considerably more technical cleverness going on here than might be apparent at first, as callbacks and recurring themes bubble to the surface in unexpected ways.

But there's an odd incongruity between these self-contained comic ideas, and the darker themes that pepper the show. Kyle recounts his mental health issues, and how these both inform, and construct barriers to, his comedy. Given his evident skill in weaving together multiple narrative strands, it's a shame the interplay between the serious and the comic isn't more fluid. The ending successfully draws all the thematic threads together in a manner that reveals considerable technical skill, and it's good to experience a show that offers a meaningful denouement. If only the journey there had been smoother.

He is one of many comics on the circuit choosing mental health as his comedy fodder of choice covering both anorexia while trying to plug his new book, Weight Expectations and anxiety as he encourages people to seek help should they require it. Firstly, he dissects the language we use around mental health explaining that we all have mental health, it is mental illness which causes difficulties. But even that, Chawner explains, is all wrong as he asks why we insist on focussing on the negative instead of the positive?

Chawner is striving to improve this as part of a working group which includes members of parliament and a stint as a presenter on a documentary about body dysmorphia. Sounds like a barrel of laughs right? Well remarkably Dave Chawner does manage to make this a show littered with laughs commanding the microphone with confidence. He is clearly passionate about the topic he has chosen to base his show around and this sometimes causes mild cases of verbal diarrhoea which are hard to keep up with as the words tumble at increasing speed from his mouth.

However, as much as the point is to make the room laugh, his material is delivered with care and compassion for those potentially experiencing any mental illness while listening and he even gives the names of places to go should one require it. Travelling, meditation and breathing are not the only options available he muses, despite the advice he once gave out under pressure.

Making light of a serious situation is a fine art and one which Dave Chawner masters with some skill. And with no price tag attached to this show it is a fine art which all can, and should, hear. Ahir Shah has returned to Edinburgh with a super-powered hour of standup, a clear step up from his show which was nominated for Best Show just saying.

The Latest News and Reviews from The Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival

The backdrop to Duffer is the Windrush scandal from earlier this year. This was no one-off, as Shah describes how his paternal grandmother was deported 25 years ago back to India, treated like an inconvenient statistic more than a human being, in precisely the way the Windrush generation have been today. Duffer is what she used to call young Ahir. Last year, Shah visited his gran for the first time since she was unceremoniously booted out of Britain. He knew it would also be the last time he would ever see her. As a piece of contemporaneous comedy, examining the effects of cruel and unnecessary policy, it cuts right to the bone.

It would be nice if a few Conservative Ministers dropped in to watch it. The infamous Andrew Lawrence, whose career path was explored in a Sky Arts documentary, seems to have turned degrees on the idea, bringing an all clean show to the fringe this year. Kearse plays up to his presumed intolerant views by putting on a character that is prime for satire. Very rarely do you find someone truly, naturally funny, especially when talking about such a dry subject such as their political stance.

As the most recent winner of Scottish Comedian of the Year, Kearse has proven himself, perhaps not as the most naturally charismatic performer, but as a solid joke writer who can stretch out even the most uneven premises into laughter. Even though it is technically a show where the host invites guest stand-up comedians to do their own few minutes of material after she delivers her own bits, there is a new format to take into consideration in the proceedings. The format, created by the host Dalia Malek, sees two co-hosts, seated by the side of the stage, interrupt clue is in the name! As any compilation show, the enjoyment of it is inevitably linked to the guests chosen and the particular format makes that even more important as not everyone can think on their feet, be interrupted and get back into the prepared material they came to perform.

The host is welcoming, natural and very funny, delivering her sharp, at times dark material based on the struggles of being an Egyptian American with excellent timing. One of the acts mentioned at the end how good an experience being part of this show was, as performing a set material for a whole month can sometimes make you start losing the passion for it and being interrupted and prompted with insightful questions will have you on your feet, creating on the spot or remembering older material, and fall in love with the craft all over again.

Both audiences and acts should be giving the Interruption Show a look. For tickets and more information click here! That world belongs to Will Mars, a dedicated comedian with a surreptitious story to tell. Miss Sylvia is a time-travelling clairvoyant, who never fails to captivate the audience as she explains her life story with the help of Gothic mementos and audience participation. This makes the show feel creative and unique, inviting the audience to question their senses, what they perceive as real or unreal.

Created and played by Careena Fenton, Miss Sylvia also provides commentary on themes such as female hysteria and Victorian medicine with her unique blend of comedic eccentricity and dark storytelling. Full disclosure, I have always been a big fan of Martha McBrier. But she is a comedy Midas: Her story is packed with shoplifting, corporal punishment, religious terrors, chain smoking and Provi loans.

This hour will fill your heart with laughter and your eyes with tears. How to be a Bad Girl, a captivating cabaret act of original songs performed on piano, is as dirty as the flyers promise — but with unexpected sweetness and poignancy. With a cheeky punch, Chap charms even the politest of Edinburgh audiences to erupt into cheers and to sing along.

Her songs are rich in variety, spanning themes of heartbreak, longing, anger, and political frustration, each its own storm of passion and humour. Among the best free shows at the fringe all month. He makes that clear from the get-go: The Harry Potter movie actor, and co-writer of The Sketch Show with Ronni Ancona and others, moved to LA eight years ago, so is able to weave in personal bits about his home life, his rescue dog, and his wedding in Vegas before he gets to the bone-crunching details of his crash.

As the show goes on, the laughs quieten for his decent material, as the sucker punch of his real-life disaster kicks in. But he manages to keep a healthy balance of comedy and confession, with a nice few plugs for the NHS and California's progressive policies on medicinal marijuana in there too. A matter-of-fact look at how this unstarry comic nearly checked out, but ended up accidentally bumping up his celebrity profile on IMDb instead. Janey introduces herself as more like a nosy cleaner than a performer prior to launching into a no-nonsense hour of laughter that appealed to everyone and the laughs flowed loud and proud as She shoots from the lip, says what she thinks and nobody and nothing is sacrosanct.

The show covers a few of her greatest hits from over the years, and boy does she have a back catalogue to draw from, but there is quite a bit of new stuff too. She gets a lot of abuse on social media but it takes more than that to worry her. With a hard upbringing and early teenage life she has developed a thick skin. The hour flew by and I am certain was enjoyed by everyone.

Candid Cafe Self-loathing, heartbreak and frequent punchlines. Will Mars has had a terrible year and it shows. He ambles on stage, glares at the room with his sad eyes and asks us not to clap. He's not earned any applause yet. This isn't a gimmick: Fortunately, it just happens to also be a tightly-focused hour of comedy. The heartbreak and redemption narrative will win Mars no points for originality, but this is a show he can be pleased with.

Mars fell in love last year in Edinburgh, but was dumped in a quite brutal manner. Losing 'the one' has forced him to look in the mirror, considering how his life has panned out. He tells his story with an earnest desperation and, while we obviously only get one side of the story, it's savage nonetheless.

On paper it sounds miserable, but Mars crams a lot of smart gags into his hour. I'm not on board with all of it sarcastically bemoaning his straightness as the reason for his not hitting the big time jars with the reflective tone but it's an enjoyably cathartic performance nonetheless.

This year's Fringe show from Sarah Callaghan is about wanting to be in a gang. She desperately wants to fit in, to feel like she's got a family, to get respect and, if possible, a slot on mainstream telly, please. But watching lots of her jokes fall flat, it seems like she needs to pick a team rather a gang.

One part of her tries to be on the chummy, mainstream comedy club team, with her banter about geezer mates in London affectionately pretend-bumming her in front of their annoyed girlfriends, and the other part seems to be searing with rage at a spoken-word night, reciting angry, bleak poems about her young, working-class disillusionment.

Although she's been grafting hard at the comedy coalface for eight years now, Callaghan seems shy to reveal her recent attempts to write poetry, but that's the bit that seems most honest and interesting. She feels invisible because of her lack of posh credentials, but it might be nothing to do with that. Her fame-hungry, over-confident swagger and weak gags don't feel like the things that are going to set her apart, but the undertow of pent-up fury at politicians that couldn't give a monkeys, and her cynical insights after growing up in a broken home might be.

Ever the struggling comedian, he reckons that after five consecutive Edinburgh show, his creative tank had run dry when it came to writing his sixth. Yet this impassioned, urgent broadside on the state of both the nation and his own life is fizzing with ideas, intensity and bloody great jokes. While he starts from familiar set-ups, such as feeling he lacks the maturity, stability and achievement he should have at 30 and mulling a future with a partner he loves, he spins them off in insightful directions.

One core idea is that society is divided between the forward-looking, who eagerly consume each quantum leap in technology, and the backwards-looking reactionaries, nostalgic for an ideal that never really exist. With that in mind, what follows is probably not representative of most nights for the Not So Late Show, but nevertheless should persuade you to go. To set the scene: Consequently, getting any kind of an atmosphere going is a challenge with a full crowd. Unfortunately, Sunday evening was not a full crowd. Featuring guests such as Freddy Mercury and the Ferrero Rocher man, the level of inventiveness required to reinvent your whole script every few days is deeply impressive.

Nevertheless, Ross and Josh play off each other fluently, and actually managed to pull off a damn good gig. The guest spots are funny, their choice of guest comedian played well, and their audience interaction was fluent. This style of kamikaze comedy shows nerves of steel. Dolphins, biscuits, and bottle openers are the main focus. In the second half things get more interesting. As well as adding sharp points to an impressive number of seemingly pointless first act jokes and lines, Falafel makes various moves to deconstruct and expand his performance.

At another point, Falafel allows the projector screen he has been using as a subtle aid to take over the show, and suddenly the audience find themselves in conversation with a friendly Indian shopkeeper. There are silly childish moments in the show, and there are wiser adult moments. Carl Donnelly opens the show by playing a little game with The Counting House lighting. A full range of colours are on offer, and he lets the audience pick the one that suits them.

Bold, bright red is too weird, and blue is too depressing, so the audience settle on a comforting orange hue. Instead there are anecdotes, observations, and a little social commentary, amusingly and sometimes cheekily delivered. Class pops up quite a lot. Class links up with race: These are not shocking revelations, but Donnelly riffs on them well enough to get plenty of laughs. Throughout the whole show, Donnelly comes across as a kind and reasonable man, consciously choosing to host a lower-key show than usual. A Kealy's Heel A funny hour of disjointed standup. Mostly, though, he tackles Brexit, and does so with aplomb, taking on common truths about our national, erm, conversation and providing genuinely new perspective.

But even a three-minute pop song needs shape, form and weight, whereas often this feels like: Is it a metaphor for an interminable Brexit? This is funny, but not a masterpiece. The premise is ludicrous: I told you, I dunno. Where his Holiness does his business, is his business. Since the age of ten. That ain't it either. It's cause I'm too intelligent for this shit.

I am the real deal fool, oh, yeah. This is all about speed and commitment. You got a GPS in the cab. Get to each set of map coordinates as quick as you can. Make it to all the coordinates then get the truck back here. Lose the truck and you fail.

First, what's a GPS? Third, who the fuck are you? Carl, do you know how many satellites the government has in space? Do you know how many biblical artifacts the government is keeping at the Pentagon? Don't you see a pattern here? Man I'm seeing patterns all over the place! Get that smoke out my face. You do know I'm black , right? I'm blind, Carl, not stupid.

I think he thinks he's gangsta, and he should fuck off. No, you fuck off. Oh yeah, he's a real one-man army! And secondly, I never made love to my mother — She wouldn't. The chicken is a bird with a tiny brain, So we assume he doesn't feel any pain, We shrink their heads and we breed 'em fast, Six wings, forty breasts, then they're gassed,. Just like old times, Tommy! Who the fuck is Tommy? The mission "Wrong Side of the Tracks" involves you and Big Smoke trying to chase a train while on a dirt bike so that he can shoot the rival gang members atop the train. It's That One Level , due to the fact that the game never tells you that you need to be at least another train's width away from the train so that Big Smoke can hit them.

You know, I mean, you beat the system! I tried for thirty years to cross over, but you've maaaanaged it, man! I mean, man, you're an icon, man! Roger that, Big Monkey, I got a fat vulture. Need to acquire a drowning baby. It ain't me, foo '! No one else is that small. I feel sorry for your dad! Hello, you're on "The Wild Traveler".

I'm on a cliff. Devils Point may be, perhaps, darker than your average FoPo watering hole, but considerably less dingy. When daytime dancers tan themselves on smoking porches and mingle with patrons returning from the neighboring food-cart pod—a far wiser bet than the house cuisine—it's less sinister than cinematic. The art-directed environs, paired with the sterling goth and rawk tunes chosen by performers and the strong pours of affable bartenders, retains a steady clientele of all genders.

Come the carnal vaudeville eruptions of the New York Times -lauded Stripparaoke sessions, overeager women are more the rule. Abandon all pretense ye who enter here. Video poker, pool, pinball, karaoke. For many Portlanders, Dig a Pony will never be a song by the Beatles. It will be dimly lit mahogany-and-leather booths surrounding a horseshoe bar in a Southeast Portland bar where wood-paneled walls are hung with vintage portraiture and an ironic houseplant that keeps the Instagramming doorman company. It's a familiar enough city-dwellers' bar with an old-timey feel and a Tumblr presence.

Germain, lemon and lavender. Like a mountain-cabin coke den, the Doug Fir Lounge is all exposed logs and mirrors. A steady stream of quality bands, local and otherwise, keep its basement venue crowded most nights, while the ambrosial bacon and other generally tasty grub have the upstairs dining room consistently hopping as well. The sleek-as-hell back patio feels about as L. Live music of the indie, hip-hop, straight-ahead rock, folk, singer-songwriter and generally listenable variety. Fire on the Mountain. The menu at Fire on the Mountain's huge Fremont restaurant and brewery is like the ultimate special-edition disc of your favorite flick: Yes, it's great to have the thing you originally loved—Portland's best fried chicken wings in a variety of rich sauces—but it's those Easter eggs that make you want to finally go Blu-ray.

Fried Oreos and maple bacon knots for dessert? At least one nutty bastard apparently drinks Pernod Absinthe with buffalo wings. Did you know that Pabst Blue Ribbon comes in light form? The obscure B-side of the chart-topping brew gets a little play at St. Johns' Fixin' To, where a long shuffleboard table runs parallel to the bar and one of the city's best pizza carts, Pizza Contadino, bakes pies out on the large front patio. In this place, it can be appreciated both ironically and not.

This is the sort of place where a regular insists you take the hot toddy made for him and a basketball game no one cares about gets folks talking about the weekend they spent in Reno. Patio, TV, occasional live music. There is no reason the Foggy Notion should be as awesome as it is. In a ramshackle-looking building on Lombard Street, this poorly marked pub opens up on tables and counters collaged with rock-album covers and strange pop-culture cutouts.

It would be easy for it to go full-on dive, but instead owner Mel Brandy—whose shouts can always be heard above whatever's on the jukebox—has an impressive array of house-infused and top-shelf liquors. A citrus juicer on the counter makes The Lolita, with tequila, fresh grapefruit juice, St. And it pays to get there early in the week. When it's gone, it's gone. There's also Tatt2for1 Tuesdays: Live music, pinball, Skee-Ball, live music, DJs, karaoke, trivia, patio. Under the watchful eyes of Abraham Lincoln in two slightly creepy paintings on the walls of Free House, a dozen or so drinkers maintain a vibe of laid-back camaraderie.

Reopening a couple of months ago under the joint ownership of Victory Bar chef Eric Moore and Olympic Provisions co-owner Martin Schwartz, the revamped Free House now boasts the best influences of both, with better-than-average bar food banh mi, anyone? I had a Tusken Raider pisco, lemon, pineapple gomme and Prosecco , which I assume you're supposed to drink one at a time so as to conceal your numbers. A partially covered patio is one of the bar's new features and offers plenty of space for summertime drinking. Although it probably never gets too rowdy at Free House—after all, Honest Abe is watching.

A buck off whatever A room full of clown paintings—from thoughtful oils to black velvets and a Christ-like Ronald McDonald—would be enough to give anyone nightmares. But the "clown room" at Funhouse Lounge serves as part of the entertainment, alongside a stack of board games and a Wii. The menu features mostly hot sandwiches and appetizers, and the bar has a concession-stand feel, with no draft beers—just cheap shots, mixed drinks, bottles, wine and soft drinks. It's probably best to go on the night of a performance or event, such as the Sunday Funhouse game show.

You wouldn't want it to just be you and the clowns. Wii, TV, live comedy, theater, live music, DJs. The blinking lights of arcade games and excited chatter of twentysomethings reliving their teenage glory while sipping beer can be a sensory overload when you first enter Ground Kontrol.

Nerds, douchebags and gamers flock to this barcade for that nostalgic arcade experience, most too young to have lived through its golden age. There are also relics like the pinball machine upstairs for the mostly forgotten mid-'90s film adaptation of The Shadow to bring you back to that bygone era. But now alcohol is involved. Next drink's on the loser. Arcade, pinball, Rock Band karaoke on Tuesday. Hair of the Dog. When Alan Sprints opened his brewery in , Americans simply didn't make barrel-aged or bottle-conditioned beers.

Sprints found inspiration on a trip to Belgium. The brewery reserves special releases for its taproom, and Sprints is now a local legend and the type of guy who gets flown down to L. Almost everything Hair of the Dog makes is impressive, even if it's not as unique as it once was.

Comparing different vintages of the same beer.

Its Oregon City locale keeps the iconic Highland Stillhouse well off the radar of most Portland locals. The Stillhouse has, quite simply, the most extensive Scotch selection that you are likely to experience anywhere, including most places in Scotland. We recommend an early day weekend ride on the 33 or 35 bus, as you are not likely to imbibe lightly. Order some Scotch you've never heard of, and while some blowhard at the other table explains that Scotch is all about the water, you will be looking out at the fine waters of the Willamette from the patio.

The voluminous beer list has plenty of rare imports from the British isles, but seriously: Stick to the Islay. There are 54 bottles of it to try before you even make it the Lowlands or the Speyside. Food specials Tuesday-Friday pm. Live music, TV, reading the whisky list over and over to yourself in a thick accent. Horse Brass is the classic Portland beer bar, created in the image of a British pub by guys who'd never seen a British pub. They did a remarkable job, and the Brass remains vital even after the passing of legendary proprietor Don Younger. English Premier League soccer, occasional live music, darts.

Open nightly for events beneath the Rialto poolroom. After walking through a brightly lit hall of middle-aged men playing pool and watching UFC, it's vaguely disconcerting to descend a staircase and suddenly find yourself in a dim room full of effete art-school kids selling zines, spinning glam rock on vinyl and doing spoken-word performances before a backdrop of crudely drawn penises.

Somehow, the Jack London Bar, in a resurrected basement lounge below the dingy Rialto, has established itself as the new downtown darling of Portland's alt-lit crowd, quietly playing host to lectures, readings and art shows while scary dudes with big bellies play video poker upstairs. Dark, grungy and graffitied, the bar suggests an edgier scene, but the Instagramming audience sipping box wine says otherwise. Still, something about the Jack London feels slightly illicit, like the folks upstairs might suddenly appear, brandishing their pool cues, to chase everyone back across Burnside.

Same as Rialto's, pm daily. Live music loud enough to enjoy yet quiet enough to allow you to hold a conversation with your dinner date will never go out of style. Jimmy Mak's has that in spades. The dimly lit jazz lounge and restaurant is famous for the weekly sets by legendary Portland drummer Mel Brown, but it also features a wide variety of acts on weekends.

A mix of well-to-do baby boomers, older couples and well-dressed by Portland standards tweeners fill out the crowd. The Greek food menu feels overpriced, and the refusal to serve beer in something other than ounce "pints" is disappointing, but the music and ambience more than make up for it. Jimmy Mak's is not a dance club. Each page of Kask's menu concludes with a quote.

Scott Fitzgerald, on the page devoted to grain and grape spirits: It's fitting, too, to find a quote from that quintessential American playboy: With undersized tables and stools, a mammoth walnut bar and bison sketched on giant chalkboards, Kask is cozy and just a tad quaint. Unused motorcycle parking spots sit out front while vintage motorcycles are suspended from the ceiling.

A dark lounge is tucked in the very back of the bar. An eclectic selection of local bands plays in a side room off the main bar throughout the week. Kelly's Olympian's namesake, Olympia Beer, is mercifully left off the 20 beers on tap. Regulars, college kids and the occasional whiny person all seem to find themselves at Kelly's for one reason or another. Only blocks from the heavily announced Noble Rot, Amalie Roberts' tiny wine den has become a mainstay for the small number of people who are able to find it, tucked a mere block away from the din of East Burnside's sardine-packed bar scene.

From the looks on a recent Friday, this seems to describe mostly arts patrons and artists over 30, enjoying carefully selected, mostly European bottles with an emphasis on Italians from malvasia to rose-sweet lambrusco. Don't be surprised to find yourself staring cross-eyed at an unfamiliar selection: It's a friendly, cozy little world where the enthusiastic server is happy to act as wine whisperer.

Daily competition for the scarce patio seats. A few years ago, musician Jonathan Richman walked into the Know and fell in love. He was in town to play the Aladdin Theater but promised to return and perform on the bar's shin-high stage, which he's done multiple times now.

A lot of his punk-era peers would probably have the same reaction.

Bar Guide 2013: Listings A-Z

More than just another dive, the Know has the battered aura of a classic rock club: Its bathroom stalls are lovingly defaced, the floors are sticky, the PBR practically flows from the faucets. Even though it's only been open eight years, it feels like it's been around forever. Maybe it's more like a neighborhood basement venue with a liquor license. And maybe that makes it even cooler. Live music, karaoke, pinball, jukebox, TV, Blazers games. If the Landmark Saloon were any more authentic, you'd need a concealed carry permit.

Inside, you'll find that high, lonesome sound played live by bands like the Rocky Butte Wranglers while men in denim jackets and women with hair buns drink ounce PBR taller boys and pints of Double Mountain. The bar took over a converted home with wood floors and cozy rooms, but the spacious street-side patio is the best part of the place. Grab a seat next to a fire pit that's nice this time of year or grab bags for the cornhole boards. Patio, live music, cornhole. Portland's other Big Pink, Liberty Glass, crams off-kilter rusticity into a building the color of a preteen girl's diary.

An antiquated two-story house standing a block away from where the "new Mississippi" begins, the bar replaced beloved restaurant Lovely Hula Hands in , then became an institution itself by dodging the trendy hand of progress sweeping through the rest of the neighborhood. Disembodied antlers decorate the walls, water is served in tin cups and the craft beers in Mason jars, nobody's bothered to remove the claw-foot tub from the restroom, and the most rhapsodized item on the menu is the Triscuit nachos. It maintains a vague literary feel—author Patrick deWitt based a three-legged dog in his award-winning novel, The Sisters Brothers , on the house pooch, Otis—while resembling a backwoods dollhouse, which is about as Portlandian as it gets.

No longtime Portlander is surprised to hear there's great stuff in the outer reaches of Southeast 82nd Avenue. Even so, the Lion's Eye Tavern comes as a bit of a shock. Turns out that one of Portland's coolest bars—one with pool tables, pinball machines, a top-tier patio and a well-curated supply of about three dozen bottled beers and eight fine, cheap pints on tap, including the slightly fruity Lion's Eye Bock—is spitting distance from Cobbler Bill's footwear and Monique Salon. The rejuvenated Mount Scott dive shows Timbers games and hosts trivia nights, but it's the little things—the nut-filled quarter machines built into the '70s-wood-paneling bar, the stack of board games—that make this pint-sized spot feel warm and cozy.

The housemade soups and sweet bartenders help, too. And all the sirens? You get used to them. TVs, much pool, pinball, board games, trivia, Timbers, patio. Whether you're lookin' to twerk while taking tequila shots or are an amateur hoping to get sexy at strip night, the colorful, queer-friendly Local Lounge—better known as Shantay—is your huckleberry. Located on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, well away from more traditional queer-centered nightlife, the lounge draws in crowds from all walks of life. TV, Blazers games, pool, video lottery, karaoke, DJs, drag shows, queer strip night, dancing.

Luc Lac likes to sweeten the pot. The place, indeed, is beautiful. Surrounding a bar island at the room's center, one wall is covered in metallic Victorian wallpaper, while the other includes a colossal ironized mural of a dragon. The Vietnamese bar cuisine is also a bit sweet, possibly even timid. It's a place of mild-mannered culinary pleasantry and Asian-inflected cocktail dreams, garbed in colonial chic.

Word to the wise, though: Go cheap and boozy. Drinkers take priority if they're smart. Skip the stupid food line and pony at the bar. Insanely cheap food specials pm Monday-Saturday. Six-decade-old neighborhood saloons don't always survive the change of ownership, but this newly sleekened tavern-—bought by Crow Bar vets three years ago—somehow shows its age more than ever before. The Lutz retrovation approximates the effect of a gearhead restoring a Fleetmaster chassis and seat covers while tearing out the engine to ensure modern performance.

Memorabilia advertising defunct breweries decorates the walls, the phone booth has been repurposed as an ATM and a partially enclosed back patio welcomes smokers. Early evening, the well-heeled demographic orders from a menu including the deadlier fringes of diner cuisine. The flat-billed hordes from parts east, who overwhelm the bar afterward, may have noticed only the availability of Jaeger. Pool, pinball, patio, TV. M Bar is the Mill Ends Park of bars. An itty-bitty, candelit establishment, it's like a tiny Victorian parlor, rid of all excessive frippery and staffed by a singularly friendly bartender.

Since Sterling Coffee moved in last June it's a cafe during the day and undergoes a costume change for the evening , M Bar has been updated with tastefully striped wallpaper, but the atmosphere is convivial as ever. It had better be: The spot is so small that, while sipping your glass of viognier or your 10 Barrel ISA no liquor here , you'll probably end up swapping stories with your neighbors. On a recent weekend evening, I discussed the Italian mob with the publisher of this very newspaper.

It's cash only, and want a receipt? The bartender—dressed like those at Teardrop but without an ounce of the pretension—will have to handwrite it for you. Friendly people, attractive wallpaper. The phrase "strip club" conjures up the image of fake-breasted blondes moving up and down poles while desperate men slip dollar bills into their G-strings and sip overpriced drinks.

Magic Garden is exactly none of those things. It's a dive bar that just happens to also have naked women dancing. A gruff, cagey old woman named Patty has tended the bar since time immemorial, and she doesn't forget who the good tippers are. Two dancers rotate between the small dance floor—where they also DJ—and help out around the bar. There is no stripper pole. The dancers' song choices veer toward indie and garage rock, a welcome accompaniment to the duo shooting pool in the back and crowd hanging out at the bar.

The stripping is more on the peripheries here. Setting foot inside Mary's Club is stepping into a slice of Portland unstuck in time. Antique fliers for the litany of performers who have graced Portland's oldest strip club line the walls. The colorful mural of historic women painted along the back wall dates back to the '50s. The cash register looks twice as old. A heavily tattooed dancer slides up and down the pole to the sultry chords of Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" in front of a surprisingly gender-balanced crowd. There are 10 beers on tap, but I always find myself gravitating toward the one with a stripper handle at the end: It's a fitting accompaniment as one takes in the wide range of women dancing at Mary's, which at one point included Portland's favorite daughter, Courtney Love.

Mary's Club is a strip club in that low-key, dive-y Portland kind of way. If the Most Interesting Man in the World held a punk-tinged lounge equivalent, this dimly lit jewel of West Burnside, long the spiritual link between uptown and the rock blocks, wouldn't be a poor blueprint. The men's restroom boasts carnation-colored, heart-shaped sink basins opposite a urinal perhaps reclaimed from the Titanic.

Friendly bartenders do not tolerate fools, whether slumming debs or aspirational homeless or Timbers faithful spilling forth from nearby Jeld-Wen Field. The Scrabble tournaments on Super Bowl Sunday epitomize a somewhat conflicted relationship with sports yet shown on the flat screens. Rockers hoping to grab a cheap beer and hobnob with their fave DJ may be absorbed into a bachelorette party as quickly as IT wizards enjoying a higher-end tipple find their non-prescription eyeglasses blown clean off by the first chords of garage up-and-comers set up by the pool table.

While recent Southeast settlement Conquistador seamlessly serves the rarefied tastes of the condo set at twilight and touring tastemakers 'round last call, the Matador doesn't quite cater to any one vision of what a bar should be—save, after a fashion, the former owner and provocateur-in-chief whose portrait in black velvet hangs near the entrance—and effectively demands the patrons to submit to the peculiar momentum of the moment.

Pool, pinball, jukebox, video poker, video games, TV, DJs, photo booth. The charms of Matchbox Lounge are time-dependent. The art is nice, the beer selection, which leans toward Double Mountain and Breakside, is solid and the bartender manages a dozen customers split between the bar, the two-top tables and one big booth as well as any one man could. The burger is just as good at 7: Maui's greets you with the olfactory wave of damp air and warm beer that screams dive.