Fringe Friday 2024: Week Five and Awards!

It's the final week! How are we all feeling? As always, enjoy some tasty, tasty reviews below, and make sure you scroll to the end for our third annual 🏆 Seagull Fringe Awards🏆.

Our Best Stand Up award has a new name! It's now 'The Nathan Cassidy Memorial Award for Best Standup'. We couldn't keep giving the award to Nathan Cassidy (who is still very funny and very much alive), so it's now named after him.

Louise Atkinson: She's Got The Look (Work In Progress)

Louise Atkinson took a room of strangers and turned us into friends who were weirdly invested in an elderly Scottish man called John getting a monocle. An expert at crowd work, Atkinson took us through her experience of unsolicited comments on her appearance, and how maybe some of us need to revisit the simple message of 'don't judge a book by its cover'. Crowd work can be uncomfortable when done badly, but Atkinson's was wonderfully good-natured, feeling more like a conversation with a friend than anything else ("I know it's you who likes a Bounty, and don't even try to hide it").

CM Kavanagh

Phil Green: Guilt

Guilty man Phil Green stood in front of us on a rainy Thursday evening to deliver Guilt; his new work-in-progress show. It's hard to perform standup, and even harder with an intimate audience; but Green pulled through with a show that had me feeling introspective, concerned that men of a certain age should talk more about their feelings, and wanting to talk with my grandparents before I can't hear their stories any longer. Comedy is at its best when relatable (and in some cases, too close to home), and Guilt felt like catharsis.

Amber Cronin

Has Anyone Seen My Dad?

It's been a while since a comedy show has made me laugh so hard that I got a stitch, but that's exactly what Marcus Dean's Has Anyone Seen My Dad? achieved. Dean takes what could easily be an incredibly difficult thing to make jokes about (his father leaving the family) and, ultimately, turns it into an hour of incredibly relatable material for everyone in the room, from the father and son duo to those without dads. Even those who hadn't, in fact, seen their dad's penis (the whole room). And especially for those incapable of apologising without doing caveman 'I sowwy' voice.

Every Fringe I hope to find at least one new guaranteed favourite, someone who I will always see if they're in town, someone who I want to take friends to see at every possible opportunity. This is it, this is that person for Brighton Fringe 2024! Go and see him any chance you get, you won't regret it.

CM Kavanagh

6 Steps To Success From The 'Award Winning' Dave Chawner

Ongoing Comedian Of The Year 2023—Dave Chawner—is on a mission to tell you how to achieve success. With high energy and strong enthusiasm in front of the microphone, Chawner's comedy is classic Fringe standup, with a beautiful set of jokes that subvert your expectations mixed in with topical political stabs (which are difficult at the best of times). With his six steps to success, you too can win awards with uncomfortable titles.

Amber Cronin

It Just So Happened: An Alternative History Show

Touring panel podcast history show It Just So Happened is produced at festivals (much like Fringe!) amongst a live studio audience. Their 'On This Day' format allows the panel guests to share their own historical fascinations. Nestled within the Brighton Toy and Model Museum, the June 2nd recording featured fun facts about Brighton (maybe we should have 25 piers!) and Hove. Panel member Micky Gibbons made us laugh throughout, so watch out for the recording when it goes live!

Amber Cronin

The Tower

What would you do if the world flooded and you had to leave your home? That's the question at the core of The Tower. Using a mix of projection, pre-recorded and live music, and movement, all set 'in the round' in the loft of the Fishing Museum, this is immersive storytelling (without a West End budget!). As an audience member, you truly feel part of the world of The Tower. It's a scary dystopian place, sure, but Emma Kelly's excellent script contains plenty of moments of magical realism, beauty, poetry, and even laughter. At the end of the day, it's all about human connection, and the equally brilliant cast embodies a trio of complex but relatable characters that you cannot help but love.

Roxy van der Post

David Tsonos: Midlife in the UK

Nearly 9pm in the belly of the Walrus on the last day of the Fringe, and Team Seagull were enjoying our final show of 2024. Canadian David Tsonos' "Midlife In The UK" was a comedic treatment of the "Life In The UK" test, alternating real questions with questions he thought would be more appropriate. Tsonos was a tremendously likeable and energetic stage presence, well able to deal with the crew of marauding Welshmen at the back who were nitpicking some of his questions. For me, this show exemplified the spirit of the Fringe: a slightly messy and chaotic but still tremendously enjoyable work in progress.

Adam Englebright

The Nathan Cassidy Memorial Award for Best Standup: Marcus Dean

It's been a while since a comedy show has made me laugh so hard that I got a stitch, but that's exactly what Marcus Dean's Has Anyone Seen My Dad? achieved. Every Fringe I hope to find at least one new guaranteed favourite, someone who I will always see if they're in town, someone who I want to take friends to see at every possible opportunity. This is it, this is that person for Brighton Fringe 2024! Go and see him any chance you get, you won't regret it.

CM Kavanagh

Runner up: Dave Fensome

Dave Fensome remains top of the game, gracing the stage at the Caroline of Brunswick with one of the funniest WIPs I've seen in a while. Though heavily focused on parenthood, there's a lot of relatable and entertaining material for those of us sans-kids, and as always, Fensome remains a highlight of my Fringe calendar.

CM Kavanagh

Best Show: Ted Hill: 100% Ted Hill

Ted Hill won our Best Show award in 2022, and now he's back with a show that leans even harder into all the stuff we liked about him the first time around. It still has some rough edges, but these ultimately only add to the charm, as Hill drifts away from standup to some other weird, endearing category of his own. If anything I've said sounds at all interesting, you'll love it.

Adam Englebright

Runner up: Violet's Vaudeville Vault

With a different line-up of incredible local and international artists across burlesque, cabaret, circus, and drag, Violet's Vaudeville Vault was a showcase of charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent night after night. It was a riot of a show that was hugely entertaining and also addressed restricting social constructs, celebrated queerness, and highlighted the beauty of every human body. It's Brighton Fringe at its very best!

Roxy van der Post

Best Concept: Pop Collaborate and Listen 90's Music Quiz

As with all good panel shows, it's a podcast where Dave Fensome and Krister Greer go back and to every UK number one album from the 90s to see if they're actually any good. Bringing along with them a host of local comedians as guest panellists, the evening was so much fun that I could barely write anything down: partly from laughing, partly from insisting that yes, 'I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)' was by Meat Loaf, thank you very much.

CM Kavanagh

Runner up: 6 Steps to Success From the ‘Award Winning’ Dave Chawner

With high energy and strong enthusiasm in front of the microphone, Chawner's comedy is classic Fringe standup, with a beautiful set of jokes that subvert your expectations mixed in with topical political stabs (which are difficult at the best of times).

Amber Cronin

Best Audience Interaction: Guess The Weight of the Bird

The premise was simple - pick an egg with a number on it out of a duck-shaped wicker basket, get a picture of the corresponding bird (with fun facts, puns, and political commentary thrown in for good measure), and guess how much it weighs. Seems easy but, as the host warned us, this was a deeply humbling experience. This was more than enough to keep me entertained—I'm easy to please. What made the hour really fly by though was our resident bird quiz host, whose self-deprecating humour and larger-than-life stage presence told us we were in capable hands - or wings? He also dealt well with the rowdy crowd of two-pints-in-by-2pm-ers and the unexpected presence of multiple 4-year-olds, whose parents seemed quite forgiving of all the tit jokes. And boy can he chuck a chocolate egg across a room.

Owen Baxter-Jones

Runner up: Bisexuelle

Selena Mersey never fails to deliver, and Bisexuelle is no exception. It feels like a major step up for Mersey in terms of props, music, and overall storytelling: not that Madonna/Whore was simple, but this is on a whole other level for a one woman show. It was goofy and charming and full of song, as we've come to expect from Mersey, while fully leaning into the overall message of: who can we become when we're allowed to develop an identity outside of what people have told us we are?

CM Kavanagh

Best Play: The Seagull and the Cat

I loved this play. I thought it was charming, it had just the right amount of seagull squawks and resemblance to Cats (2019), the music was fantastic, and the overall story is absolutely delightful. I was hooked from the start, and loved the creativity on show. With an overarching message of 'don't try to be what you're not and embrace who you are', soundtracked to some wonderful flute and accordion music, it's a show anyone really can get something out of.

CM Kavanagh

Runner up: The Tower

A dystopian play about climate action is a tough sell when many theatre-goers turn to stories for escapism. Leave it to local writer Emma Kelly to take on such a challenge! With her signature magical realist touch, the audience is transported to a world where danger and beauty, and rage and poetry go hand-in-hand. Staged 'in the round' in the loft of the Fishing Museum, it's immersive and intimate theatre that brings you so close to the brilliant cast you have no choice but to cheer for them.

Roxy van der Post

Ones To Watch: Louise Atkinson: She's Got The Look (Work In Progress) and Phil Green: Guilt

Louise Atkinson took a room of strangers and turned us into friends who were weirdly invested in an elderly Scottish man called John getting a monocle. Crowd work can be uncomfortable when done badly, but Atkinson's was wonderfully good-natured, feeling more like a conversation with a friend than anything else ("I know it's you who likes a Bounty, and don't even try to hide it"). I'm excited to see where she goes next!

It's hard to perform standup, and even harder with an intimate audience; but Phil Green pulled through with a show that had me feeling introspective, concerned that men of a certain age should talk more about their feelings, and wanting to talk with my grandparents before I can't hear their stories any longer. Comedy is at its best when relatable (and in some cases, too close to home), and Guilt felt like catharsis.

CM Kavanagh and Amber Cronin