@ Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Edinburgh, until Sun 16 Aug 2015 @ 21:30
The Counting House loft is exactly the right spot for a dose of political comedy. Cramped, sweaty, it has the conspiratorial atmosphere of an underground radical meeting or a surreptitious gathering of plotting revolutionaries.
Not that London comedian, Don Biswas, hits us with the politics straight away. He’s done what a lot more free Fringers should do, brought a buddy to help out by bookending the set – Welshman Rob Thomas, who’s positive, matey, not actually the best fit for what to follow, but a good wingman. Biswas has also split his topics, as the title suggests, into two neat sections. This all means we get a tight thirty-five, rather than a flabby fifty minutes.
The first segment of the set is given over to his dyspraxia, a condition that affects his ability to remember things like his keys and directions, though not apparently his ability to write and deliver a strong set. It’s gently poking fun at the absurdities of the condition with some wisecrack rhetorical questions.
Then it’s into the politics. His MO is: introduce a topic, often quite labyrinthine and weighty – TTIP, the Bilderberg Group – give ’em a quick summary, hit them with a line. Dealing in serious stuff, which someone has to, but he finds the funny quickly, and without lecturing. There’s a lot of good lines here, and they’re spaced at regular intervals, and delivered smartly.
It’s great that a comic is doing this kind of material, shame that more aren’t, and he’s set himself up in the right venue with the right length of set to show it off to best effect. Of its kind, this is an excellent gig. Well played, that man.