Another evening of cracking comedy from the Oxford Festival Fringe Preview Comedy Festival!
Tez Ilyaz - Before Eight
Tez Ilyaz delivered an hour of stand up featuring some extremely smart, up to the minute political comedy. He presented subjects like the rise of Biscoff jostling with terrorism, the World Cup with the recent election, in a deeply structurally pleasing show. Ilyaz managed to be genuinely edgy without being annoying or ever seeming to seek to offend for the sake of it - a difficult trick to pull off and extremely refreshing to see. Much of this skill lay in a well crafted persona I was never quite sure whether to believe or not. Ilyaz is playing in
Sara Barron - Anything For You
Sara Barron is incredibly sharp and delivers her work with a huge amount of energy and verve, blasting the audience into submission in the best possible way. Here she gives us a show about her mother, with anecdotes that had the audience gasping and howling. Like Ilyaz, Barron is walking a fine line here along what is acceptable, and, like Ilyaz, I felt she always made the right call. This work is high energy and high speed: you get a huge amount of jokes per minute, with one liners and physical comedy interwoven with some surprisingly tender moments. I particularly liked Barron’s audacious crowd work - it was a real delight to watch the audience squirm (I did NOT get picked). Sara was extremely clear that she was working on the structure of the show still, which came off not as messy but as truly collaborative - it felt like a gesture of respect that she’d trust us to help shape the work, but despite being unfinished this show was energising and satisfying.
As with the rest of the comedy festival, these shows are works in progress. At some points, both comedians referred to notes, visibly changing their mind about the structure of the piece as they went. I find this peek behind the curtain of how the shows are constructed fascinating - its easy to watch a finished show and experience it as almost a chat, or the comic following a train of thought, being completely surprised by a callback that closes the circle on the structure. Of course, this never happens by accident, but I hadn’t realised quite how much some comedians work this out on stage, testing audiences to see what lands or not. I’m not a stand up myself, but if I was trying to be, I’d certainly be seeking out these kinds of shows to learn more about the process. As a fan, I still love them, out of interest and also as an opportunity to see these shows first - although still unfinished they have all the charm and energy that I’d expect from the finished pieces. And they really are an astonishing bargain. The Oxford Festival Fringe Preview Comedy Festival is on until the end of the month.