Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

A great craftsman of one-liners, Eric Rushton is also here to talk about his father’s death in 2020, and he does a good job of making the two aspects of his show work together.

With droll, clever writing, he confounds tropes of masculinity, in a funny and honest routine about his body dysmorphia. He’s a still, low-key presence, meek but with a laddish side, and resisting easy comedic categorisation. Crowd work is another significant string to his bow, reflected in a lot of his social media output, and he manages to keep a stag party almost rapt even while talking about the toxic pressures of masculinity.

Rushton’s dad looms large in this, not in a way that feels overbearing or exploitative, but his presence and absence is felt even in the jokes that aren’t directly dealing with his death. I don’t know if anyone’s still doing ‘jokes of the Fringe’ lists, but watch out for one of my favourites from Rushton: ‘I was named after my Dad. Chronologically, I mean.’ A perfect little one-liner.

Coming from a working class background and a family of seven siblings, Rushton isn’t angry enough for dogmatism, even sparing a kind word for Champagne Socialist – 'it’s better than being a champagne Nazi'.

The story of his dad’s decline and eventual death is not a pleasant one, and seemingly not sugarcoated by this young Birmingham-based comedian as he admits there were times during the dementia that he wished for a speedy resolution. Rushton has interesting things to say about how we experience and perform grief, watching his siblings compete to post the most touching tribute on Facebook, and realising that, for him, a public ‘like’ on a post about his father means more than a private message of condolence. 

With profound meditations on mortality in one hand and cracking one-liners in the other, he sometimes loses his balance, and the energy in the (very hot) room dips noticeably after the halfway point, but this is an ambitious and promising debut.

• Eric Rushton: I Had a Dream And You Were All In It is on at Just the Tonic at The Mash House at 4pm.

Review date: 16 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House