Stuart Laws @ Pleasance Courtyard

Some tall tales with Stuart Laws

Review by Tony Makos | 15 Aug 2017

Stuart Laws treads the boards of the Pleasance Attic sporting what he refers to as the coolest of trendy outerwear, the Latvian Gilet. Do not believe his lies. It quickly becomes apparent that Laws is the worst kind of narrator – that’s right, an unreliable one!

And this will be the first of many porky pies that he’ll be telling over the next hour. Stay vigilant... Mr Laws also has a terrible habit of pronouncing very straightforward English words completely incorrectly, repeatedly, almost as if he’s doing it deliberately. Surely no one could be that STUPID. Won’t he ever learn from his mistakes? No wonder he has trouble getting a girlfriend. Actually, now I think about it, I bet that story is all made up as well. I was almost taken in my that one, too.

There’s a delightfully cheeky, wide-eyed innocence to Laws’ storytelling that gets you all caught up until – BANG! – he says something really obviously, madly, wrong that it reminds you just what a load of old rubbish he’s talking. How anyone takes this man seriously I have no idea. It could be that behind the nonsense he’s spouting there’s a deliriously clever twisting and turning of language, a full command of the elliptical sentence, a sublime sense of the silly and an admirable skill with a tall tale that puts many of his contemporaries in the shade. It could be. But it could also be a load of bollocks. Don’t say you weren’t warned.


Stuart Laws Stops, Pleasance Courtyard (The Attic), until 27 Aug (not 16), 7pm, £6-9.50

http://theskinny.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-fringe/comedy