Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

There’s plenty of both rootin’ AND tootin’ in Bangtail, a broad send-up of Spaghetti western clichés. Our hero is the ‘baddest cowboy in all of Texas’, a swaggering, inscrutable figure convinced he can never get ‘got’ in any gunfight.

He moseys into town on his faithful steed Buttercup, swings open the saloon doors and picks up the drunk woman at the bar – with people drawn from the audience required to take all the parts. That even includes the doors, with the selected punter required to squeak on cue.

Minnesotan Lil Wenker is broadly following in the bootsteps of many other Gaulier-trained clowns with this format, bringing a strong aesthetic and some neat touches – cutlery for spurs, for example – to the party.

But her relationship with the supporting players can be awkward. The brooding machismo of her alter-ego requires her to huskily growl instructions to those she selects, then get exasperated with them when they get it wrong. 

The show’s fluidity falls on the shoulders of The Nemesis, who tonight was a shy guy who didn’t seem entirely comfortable with performing, so requiring plenty of frustrating restarts until he delivered what was demanded of him.

Wenker tends to get laughs from insinuating her ‘volunteer’ as a dumb idiot who’s getting everything wrong than celebrating whatever they do, in the way that more generous Fringe clowns such as Garry Starr or Luke Rollason do. Instead, her approach reminded me of school bullies keeping something away from their victim, cackling as they make their mark grasp and jump for something forever kept out of reach. In this case, that elusive prize is the line reading Wenker demands.

Underpinning this is some commentary on performative alpha-masculinity… maybe. For a mid-show pivot to a mirror-image scene set in modern corporate America echoing many of the themes and lines of the Old West section, suggests it might be about finding your calling in life. It’s unclear, to be honest, and this section seems like it’s trying to be clever, rather than an organic progression.

Still, we hurtle towards a big double entendre to close out the show, and reflect on some good, some bad and some ugly moments in the preceding hour.

Review date: 11 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard