Return of the Mach(ynlleth Comedy Festival).
- Alison Hancock
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
This weekend was Machynlleth Comedy Festival, my favourite festival of the year. It’s like Edinburgh Fringe but without the flyers and desperate 22 year old comedians whose hope is dying before your very eyes. I actually do love the Edinburgh Fringe, but I can’t afford it this year so, for now, I am bitter.
Machylleth Comedy Festival is much smaller, set in a small, hippy town in a bit of Wales a lot of people never hear about. It’s bloody lovely. You can camp by the Co-op and reach every venue with a 10 minute walk as long as you don’t stop to talk to everyone you know on the way, or get distracted when you see one of your comedy heroes eating chips by the clock tower. This year a load of my non-comedy friends were there, too, so while there weren’t many morning gigs there was a lot of in-tents laughter (not sorry, this is my blog).
Best of all, almost everything you can see there is brilliant. I’ve been going since 2015 and in that time I only really remember seeing a couple of shows where the work in progress wasn’t really progressed enough. I have, however, seen some incredible comedians, sometimes on purpose, sometimes just a random pick from the brochure. Little Wander, who run the event, pick all the acts and they’ve got some good taste.
This year my stand out shows were Siblings, John-Luke Roberts, Madeleine Brettingham, Paul Hileard and Eleanor Morton. In particular Mach always has a good selection of really creative comedians — storytellers, clowns, experimenters and general weirdos. You can see more familiar comedians at the bigger venues, but the cool kids are in The Old Pizzeria, or in a classroom in Ysgol Bro Hyddgen, or on a steam train, watching a work in progress or a live interpreted Welsh language gig*.
This year I was volunteering, stewarding in the evenings at The Old Pizzeria (you know, where the cool kids are). ‘Volunteering’ makes it sound like I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart, but who can argue with getting to see six excellent comedians in exchange for taking tickets and names at the door? They got my ‘hilarious’ queue banter for free.
In total I managed 14 and a half shows, which you may think is Too Many Shows (you may be right), but I’m still gutted at missing so many other brilliant comedians.
It’s on every May bank holiday weekend and I’d encourage everyone to get tickets…but after me so I can still get tickets to my favourites.
Conclusion. It was OK, I suppose.
*Highly recommend the show Comedy Translates (Comedi’n Cyfeithu) — Welsh language comedians try and do their set while comedian Steffan Alun interprets for us monolinguals. It’s just the right kind of unhinged.