Bilal Zafar: Care

VENUE: Underbelly, Bristo Square

TIME: 5:30pm – 6:30pm, 3–29

Aug, not 15

With no live audiences to play for, many stand-ups turned to platforms like Twitch during the unprecedented lockdown of 2020. When it came to streaming, few had the ingenuity of Bilal Zafar. The mild-mannered stand-up coaxed a soap-opera style drama out of Pro Evolution Soccer’s Master League mode, giving back stories and personality traits to a computer generated motley crew of international athletes. Niche, but brilliantly imaginative.

On today’s evidence Zafar doesn’t have quite the same confidence on stage as he does on screen. He takes time to get going, and there’s some stilted back and forth with some latecomers. But he settles in, and Care – the story of his year working for minimum wage looking after the elderly – reveals itself to be a big-hearted show, delivered with a laid back charisma that releases itself slowly into the audience.

He has a natural gift with strange detail (a posh cat with a deep voice, a breadstick used in place of a cigarette) but the guts of the show is grounded in cold harsh reality, in his recollections of debt collectors, dementia patients, and in the highs and lows of his relationship with Barry, a resident of the care home. The two’s friendship is beautifully, subtly rendered. It’s a relationship that lingers in your mind long after the show, and maybe there’s an age gap bromance comedy-drama for Zafar to explore further. For now, we have a touching Fringe hour that shows Zafar is a comedian with pathos to spare as well as conceptual chops. ✏︎ Craig Angus

VENUE: Just the Tonic at The Caves

TIME: 2:25pm – 3:25pm, 4–28 Aug, not 15

Just a Normal Girl Who Enjoys Revenge is a fun and fast-paced show by golfer-cum-comedian Hannah Fairweather, who may have more in common with her idol Taylor Swift than it first seems.

Fairweather is a fast talker –she’s making up for being quiet in school – and the jokes are coming thick and fast from the get-go. Working her way through a list of people that have wronged her, she manages to find parallels between Taylor Swift and Santa Claus as well as golf and comedy, drawing on her experiences playing competitive golf from an early age.

She sets up a lot of jokes at the start of the show, rewarding the audience in unexpected ways throughout the hour. Most of it is whole- some fun, but she doesn’t shy away from risqué jokes about incest, which are particularly effective because she – as she alludes to herself – looks so prim and proper. In addition to a refreshing take on mental health, she also talks about uncomfortable experiences as a woman in the comedy industry, which she suggests might not do her any favours.

The show loses pace towards the end, when the jokes are fewer and less sophisticated as she puts the focus on her golfing days in South Carolina, but this is a fun, energetic and well-crafted hour by somebody who clearly isn’t the revengeful kind at all. ✏︎ Veronica

Finlay