Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Viral TikTok comedian Tim Murray is in Edinburgh to celebrate his path to being a queer adult, from wishing to sit at the girls' table as a child, to now finding his own coven. 

Murray enters with black latex gloves, a long wig perfect for dramatic hair flicks, and skin as green as Elphaba from Wicked. His hour of stand-up and rewritten songs from witchy pop culture moments, such as Wicked and The Sanderson Sisters, pays tribute to all those who wanted to wear a witch's hat instead of a Batman costume for Halloween. 

His one-liners, outrageous dancing, and crude humour is bound to entertain. While he has an interesting perspective as a teacher in the US, commenting on the ban of the word 'gay' in his classroom, relinquish any expectations of deeper commentary or clever wit. 

It’s conversational, it’s fun, and it’s undoubtably silly. His jokes tend to remain within the realm of the expected: dissing JK Rowling with a 'Harry Potter ain’t shit' song, relaying funny comments from his Gen-Z students, and throwing in a dramatic hair reveal. It certainly is not groundbreaking comedy, but its ridiculousness did have the audience laughing. 

An image which perhaps sums up the performance is Murray standing in a schoolgirl outfit and a goat mask, waving a rainbow flag as confetti falls all around him. 

Despite a few jokes falling flat, nobody could say that Murray is not committed, drinking his water from spherical potion bottles, showing off his impressive singing range, and impressing the audience during an Elphaba song challenge with his knowledge of Broadway stars. But it falls a little short of spellbinding.

• Tim Murray is Witches is on at Underbelly Bristo Square at 9.20pm.

Review date: 4 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Kashmini Shah