EDINBURGH 2023: Review: OLAF FALAFEL'S SUPER STUPID SHOW (20% MORE STUPIDER), The Pleasance Courtyard

The Olaf Falafel website description declares he is ‘an author, illustrator and a stand-up comedian.’ So, with eagerness I booked in to see Olaf Falafel's Super Stupid Show (20% More Stupider) with my daughter. The audience anticipation was apparent upon entry, Falafel playfully and warmly welcomed his young onlookers with a spaghetti hoop ‘ooooo’ song and declared his true name to be Derek Chickpea, to squeals of laughter.

Absurdist madness began in the format of a series of unique and unknown games; ‘Fishing for Insults’ is a bath duck game created to hurl mild insults, then there followed a hypnotic round of ‘Don’t Look at the Horse’ was of course extremely difficult to look away from, ‘Sausage in my bum-bag’ offered wisdom in the format of “blessings” for the future, ‘Tit on a stick’ was multi-layered and devastatingly catchy, and the ultimate game we should all be forced to attempt, ‘The Cheese of Truth’ can only describe as truly inspired. The Jarlsberg cheese is strangely insightful, having progressed into an “extreme cheese throwing reading challenge”, from ever higher altitudes, such is the wisdom in Falafel’s madness.

Falafel advises the parents in the audience that they can ditch the weasels and attend his grown-up show Olaf Falafel: Look What Fell Out of My Head, (which runs at 15:45 at The Laughing Horse, at The Pear Tree.) In a section Falafel describes as “carnage” we learn of his famous ‘bum-faced snails’ where the children are invited to follow a tutorial to create a drawing of their very own snail. With relish, most of the children in attendance covered the floorspace to create their own attempt of the image. My eight-year-old proceeded to draw a swirly snail, naming it ‘Sahra.’

By the end we were full Falafel super-fans, running to the front of the queue to buy a pin of a purple snail, sensibly called ‘Janet’ (it was that option, or a pink snail called Colin) and we obviously had to have one of his Blob Fish books too.

This family show is an absolute treat, as it is as enjoyable for the adults as it is for the children. Olaf Falafel is a consummate performer, wildly entertaining, eccentrically wonderful and infectiously joyful.

Catch Olaf Falafel's Super Stupid Show (20% More Stupider) at 11:40am, at the Pleasance Courtyard, Beside from 2nd - 27th August 2023 (Not 16th.)

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