AAA Stand-Up

★★

archive review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes

By Catherine Sylvain

Published 28 Aug 2010

AAA Stand-Up is designed to give you a select taste of new acts, saving you the trouble of trawling the catalogue yourself, with fairly prestigious past performers including Tom Craine and Maff Brown. However, it's never good when the compere is the best part of the show. In the case of Matt Rudge, it's a relief when he returns to the stage between acts. Charming, unpretentious and gently witty, Rudge's real gift is relating with the crowd – he all but exchanged numbers with some of the front row. Sadly, the comedians he introduces make no such connection.

Paul McCaffrey plays an aggressive everyman with elements of Ricky Gervais, but while his whole set revolves around his own simplistic rightness in the face of insane bureaucracy, the audience don't seem to agree. His misanthropy should be endearing but instead it is just frightening: when McCaffrey complains about the grottier parts of Edinburgh it feels like we are to blame rather than in cahoots.

Marlon Davies is by contrast much happier, bouncing eagerly on stage and performing an impromptu rap. Yet his initial enthusiasm is let down by the flimsiness of material that is mostly comprised of dated news stories: Obama, swine flu and the credit crunch. It feels like he hasn't written anything new for months. He even makes a Coldplay joke.

With the exception of Rudge, none of AAA Stand-Up's acts look ready to take on their own Fringe show, and while the evening isn't uninteresting, it's not particularly promising.