Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Max Fulham : Full of Ham
Corrie McGuire Management
Genre: Comedy, Sketch Comedy
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
This is ventriloquism for the digital age, deploying an inventive range of devices allowing Max Fulham to show his superlative skills as a practitioner, together with his consummate abilities as a stand-up and sketch writer/performer. An hour of captivating nonsense.
Review
Max Fulham is full. Full of energy, of himself, of life. And full of ham, literally, by the end of this whirlwind, laugh out loud hour encompassing stand-up, sketches, audience participation and peerless ventriloquism.
Bouncing onto the tight Cellar space in the Pleasance Courtyard on another sell-out evening, it’s full on from the word go. We’re straight into a short stand-up routine that gets the laughing juices flowing and the tightly paced audience engaged, hooked on the performer, if you will. And Fulham never lets go, not for an instant, as we segue seamlessly into a series of sketches that showcase his consummate skills as a ventriloquist and raconteur.
Ventriloquists seemed plentiful when I was growing up but changing tastes and fashions over the past half century saw the number earning a living in this segment of the performing arts fall to low double digits about ten years ago. Perhaps it was a failure to move on from the standard “dummy on the knee being rude” routine. However, the genre has been steaming back into vogue in the last decade with Fulham one of these “newbies” slowly but surely dragging ventriloquism into the 21st century.
Whilst Fulham uses a couple of these traditional knee or high table based dummies, his act stands out from the crowd through the variety of devices he deploys, for example, his use of a box containing his inner voice(s), thoughts that he really doesn’t want to lay before the punters. But the box has other ideas, naturally. And that’s the source of much humour as he combines the “box” throwing in asides here, there and everywhere whilst he’s engaged with either another object or, occasionally, a member of the audience.
Fulham’s sense of comic timing is superb and his ability to “throw” his voice borders on the uncanny, ethereal even. He knows when to use the pause, when to rattle through the patter and how to float an idea out to the audience, leave it hanging for a while, then come back to it, normally with an acerbic punchline that leaves pretty much everyone in stitches.
It’s often tempting to focus on the ventriloquist’s lips as he converses with his anthropomorphic mates, watching for those hard to form sounds causing movement. Yep, I was guilty of this on occasion but I’d defy anyone to spot Fulham’s lips even twitching. Top marks, then, for technique. And he switches effortlessly between his own voice and that of his “friends” on stage, nearly always involving rapid change of pitch and accent. His extended sketch involving a supermarket self-checkout and all the things that go wrong (with annoying regularity) brought the house down, combining as it did the beep of the scanner, a craggy old assistant and endless remarks about tiramisu.
And the ham? Well, those of us of a certain age remember the delights of Billy Bear ham. It was a 1980’s staple and is still going strong today. So, why not invent an anthropomorphic version of it and give Billy Bear a voice? A voice that insisted on singing its own song. On stage. In front of a packed house. And that wouldn’t shut up, even when shoved back in the ubiquitous suitcase that all ventriloquists carry around with them. There was, sadly, only one thing Fulham could do to silence his annoying sidekick…….
What makes this a highly recommended piece of theatre is the genuine variety in delivery, the innovative devices he deploys as vehicles for his core skill as a ventriloquist, the quality of the comedic material and Fulham’s seemingly infinite vocal dexterity. Top that off with a razor sharp mind that picks up on every audience reaction (creating more humour with his clever ad libs and responses) and you’ve the recipe for top class entertainment.
Word is spreading. Fulham is a star on the rise, someone who won’t be spending future summers playing to audiences in a Fringe cupboard. Bigger things await. So, catch this talent whilst you can experience it in the cosy confines of this particular cupboard that enables you to feel a part of something that’s pretty special.
