Andi Osho: Afroblighty, The Stand, Edinburgh
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Your support makes all the difference.I once shadowed a comedy course for a feature in The Independent, which Osho also attended.
And while I have misgivings about courses as the way forwards (having experienced going solo with open spots beforehand), I could see that in this controlled environment Osho was the one most likely to fly the nest and spread her wings. The wind beneath these wings was an established acting career, but her success post-course has been impressive. She won the Funny Women Award not long afterwards, and she is now a television fixture, most recently on Channel 4's Stand Up for the Week.
I'd still bet on Osho to keep up her success curve, but she does need to break out of the theatrical dictum that suggests anything can be funny if you posture enough.
She has insight, though, if not always the best approaches for exploring it. She tells us of her loss of faith in the world when she became aware of being abused because she is black. "There's no orange in the Union Jack either, but Bob Monkhouse was never asked to leave" is an example of one of the throwaway lines she uses to try to satisfy the notion of her disillusionment, just when she seems on the verge of something pithier.
While there are nice moments – her uncle being convinced that Obi-Wan Kenobi is Nigerian – the show unravels as it progresses and ends on a rather earnest spoken-word piece. Ultimately, Osho's debut hour doesn't deliver enough on laughs. She has further to go to earn her live spurs.
To 29 August (not 16) (0131 558 7272)
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