Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Comedy fans with long memories might remember Hale and Pace’s granite-faced bouncers The Management, delivering their deadpan lines with gravelly menace.

Mad Ron comes from the same crime school. The Third Hardest Man in Uxbridge is a grizzled ex-con, an old-fashioned villain now allegedly going straight and giving us – a ragtag collection of inmates – some advice on what to expect when we are finally out of stir.

Progress is not something he embraces, having been inside so long that he no longer fits into the modern world. He’s stuck in a time when Netflix and chill was still ‘VHS and doss’, so bemoans the new generation of Criminal with their soft cybercrime in place of an honest day’s coshing people. Some are even - shudder – vegans or vapers. There’s a touch of Al Murray’s Pub Landlord to the character, too, as he flaunts his intolerance of anything that doesn’t fit his rigid, old-school worldview.

Creator Steve Lee delivers this in the low monotone of a man who knows he doesn’t need to raise his voice to be intimidating. It’s also a static delivery, as he remains rooted to the spot next to his suitcase containing  the occasional prop. But this inert deadpan is a drag over the hour, and a little more oomph, performance or even just volume would go a long way. The few techniques he does employ to break up the show, primarily reading from his memoirs or his self-help book, Shit Yourself Thin, do nothing to add dynamism or variety to proceedings. 

Lee has inventive jokes, and plenty of them, that deserve the best vehicle to show them off. Most of the script is gag-rich as he expresses Mad Ron’s irritations pithily and imaginatively. The world of his small-town crime gangs – communicating by lobbing bricks through each other’s windows – is well depicted with some enjoyably surreal touches.

Forming this into an hour-long show does, however, expose the limitations of the character. But Mad Ron is a robust comic conceit – and if you don’t laugh, it’ll only cost you your kneecaps.

• Mad Ron: Crime School is on at Just the Tonic at The Mash House at 8.35pm

Review date: 9 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House