Andrew Lawrence: Reasons To Kill Yourself

There's a neat trick in Andrew Lawrence's (3 stars) repertoire that really elevates his sets. Here and there, along a landscape of misanthropic potshots and knee-jerk nihilism, he’ll pick up momentum and hurtle into a wordy, sustained assault.

It's like someone's released a valve: out comes this unrelenting surge of venom that knocks his target to the ground and just keeps flowing. There’s no rage, only resignation and a sneering, thin-voiced denouncement of whatever's been eroding his faith in humanity of late.

Here, Lawrence does it to rain on the parade of po-faced feminist standup, which he sarcastically applauds for foisting guilt on comedy crowds. He does it to demonise payday loan firms, with their predatory greed. He does it to mount a fluent, thesaurus-trawling hate speech on the obese. And woe betide anyone who wastes his time with such a tedious question as “How was your weekend?”.

Between these tirades, more fleeting lines imagine an assisted suicide app, Lawrence’s last words or his death row meal. He presents a world where love is delusion, where owning a motorhome or a breadmaker is a cry for help, and where we are just "gene-carriers" for the next wave of insipid, small-talking cretins. Oh, your kids did something annoying? "Kill them," comes the response.

Lawrence makes a virtue of his charmlessness, casting himself as the voyeur in the wardrobe or the sicko fantasising about interrupting Valentine's dinners with a shotgun. This is his ninth consecutive Fringe, and he's found an audience that takes grim satisfaction in what a wretched creature he is.

But it seems that's not enough for him. At various points, he makes mention of how he was dumped last summer, both by his agent and his long-term girlfriend. Then, for the final third, he breaks out another stream of invective for an extraordinary, bridge-burning swipe at a comedy industry he feels hasn’t given him his dues.

Ruthless agents and indifferent commissioners get it in the neck, as well as the mediocre peers promoted to fame ahead of him. He conveys the death of hope and the myth of meritocracy – and a hefty sense of entitlement. Granted, it’s inflated by those who brown-nosed him during his Live At The Apollo peak, but it’s entitlement nonetheless. What’s more, considering he’s just stuck the boot into feminist comics for bringing divisive, uncomfortable material into the clubs, there’s a double standard here.

You feel for him, and his honesty’s welcome after all the persona-heavy shtick, but you're also left with a sense of being implicated in his demise. He’s ready to give up, and if this is indeed his last-ever Fringe, it’s a hell of a low note to end on.

Bec Hill's Ellipsis (4 stars) is also preoccupied with a lack of success, though you couldn’t imagine a more different approach. Last year she bumped into a childhood idol and drunkenly boasted to him that she was an award-winning comedian – it was a lie, and now she’s got to make it a reality.

That’s a good excuse to toy with the stereotypical traits of a gong-worthy hour: impassioned, slick, emotionally manipulative. None of these comes naturally to this chirpy Aussie optimist, who’s best known for animated flip-chart wizardry and gloriously cheesy puns.

So now she's out to diversify, dabbling with a playful clowning intro, some knowingly weak observational fare and an exercise in forcing herself to get angry over subjects picked off a spinning wheel. In riffing on her supposed blind spots as a comic, Hill not only defers to those who do specialise in weightier material, she also gives a good account of what her own strengths are.

There’s a goofy conceit where her self-doubt rings in on a tin-can phone to pour scorn on her efforts and chastise her for veering off track. These tongue-in-cheek theatrical sections give a handy route to a feel-good conclusion, even if there’s some dead air in Hill’s delivery.

For all the talents on display here, it's the two main pillars of her act that shine most. In an impressive pun-based interlude, the rule is: the more tortuous the setup, the sweeter the payoff. And then there are those incredible cardboard contraptions. With tabs and flaps and spinning discs, a punter's imagination fills the page in real time, but the showstopper comes when Hill illustrates a morbid Phil Nichol tune, her hands a blur as she brings her doodles to life.

Maybe in a few Fringes’ time she too will be up there, a dead gaze behind the 60s-style eyeliner, animating her enemies in pop-up and punning on her grudges. Don’t bet on it. This year, she’s a ray of sunshine.