DOES Sarah Kendall’s nomination signal a new attitude to female comics after nine years’ absence from the Perrier shortlist? Or is she a one-off, a blip on the chart? I hesitate to make too many predictions about next year — this year’s list features one unknown American duo (Epitaph) and one British actor who had intended only to try his show out for one week (Jackson’s Way’s Will Adamsdale) — but nine years after Jenny Eclair became the only woman to win the main award, there are fewer good female comics than there are good male comics.
There are fewer female comics. Those female performers who do surface at Edinburgh — such as Joanna Neary, this year’s Best Newcomer nominee — often opt for the less confrontational arena of character or sketch comedy.
As well as being The Times’s Edinburgh comedy critic, I am on this year’s Perrier panel. We have one objective: to find comedy worth getting excited about. I voted for Kendall to be on the shortlist because she offers one of the funniest hours on the Fringe. She falls prey neither to girly tics (Lucy Porter) nor blokish bravado (Jo Brand). She controls a room on her own terms. But she is just one of a strong line-up.
American comic Reginald D. Hunter is the act to beat for sheer performance skills. A trained actor, he captivates the room in his provocatively titled A Mystery Wrapped in a Nigga. Chris Addison, the lone British stand-up, parades his intelligence in Civilization, a potted history of the past 5,000 years. Adrian Wenner and Ethan Sandler’s Epitaph may be the saddest show yet nominated, but its theatricality makes it an outsider. Jackson ‘s Way, a comic spin on motivational speakers, is is in a league of its own.
Whether Will Adamsale’s guru holds up against three top stand-ups and a masterful double act, we won’t know until midnight on Saturday.