The Beehive Comedy Club
The Beehive Inn, Ediburgh
Friday 24th / Saturday 25th October
As previously reported in ‘The Mumble’ the Beehive Comedy Club is housed in an upstairs room in the Beehive Inn in the Grassmarket. An intimate venue with roughly 50 seats available, last night about 46 of these were filled as the five comedians, plus compere, played to a small audience but one that constituted a near full house. First up was the Compere Rick Molland who has an easy confident syle and is genuinely funny in unexpected situations. The way he dealt with (and used to his advantage) the fact that there was a party from the Cayman Islands in the audience was hilarious. I also enjoyed his intro to act 2 when he did a ‘what was your worst ever job’ routine with the audience. The main diet for the night introduced by Rick was split into 3 sections: (i) A young Glaswegian comic, (ii) three new comics all doing short inputs and (iii) the headliner.
The young Glaswegian was Jamie Dalgleish who made much of his Easterhouse upbringing and his observational delivery of being young in a big working class housing scheme in Glasgow brought him many laughs and some genuine empathy from the audience. I particularly liked his gag about how you can tell the social standing of an area by the months that the ice cream vans come round – in Easterhouse the vans are plying their trade in coldest December.
The middle section was very interesting. Chris Griffin (who doubled as the doorman) made much about the perils of being short and sweating a lot. A very young Scott Laird told us of life as college student in Lanarkshire. A good line about applying for a student discount in a lapdancing club by using his Young Scot Discount card. The third of the new comics was Gareth Mutch and he was my favourite. A slightly rotund 20 year old with a disarmingly gravelly voice that he used to great effect. The other comedians on the night commendably tried to engage the audience with spontaneous responses to stuff that was going on in the seats. This of course can be a bit hit-or-miss as you deviate away from your prepared material. Gareth stuck to his script and his 10 minute input was all the better for it. Some great gags, very very good timing and some wonderful facial expressions.
The headliner Gus Lymburn was by far the most energetic of the comedians and was able to capitalise on the fact that by the time he came on the drink had flowed. He was by far the most spontaneous and encouraged heckling and other forms of audience participation. A genuinely funny and engaging guy Gus works well with and without a script. He finished by asking for feedback and was delighted when one lady in the audience from Perthshire announced that this was ‘better than Aberfeldy’. I have a feeling that this ‘recommendation’ might find its way onto the publicity material for the Beehive Comedy Club !
Reviewer : Chris Donkin
Mumble Comedy 