Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Musical comedy has largely shed the reputation it once had for being the first refuge of the hack, exploiting audience affection for well-known hits and the instinct to clap when a song’s over.

At their best, musical comedians must do what a stand-up does – but with rhyme and meter, too. That’s certainly the case with guitar-strumming comic Alex Mackeith’s opening number about spending lockdown with his dad. This is a great routine, full of real frustrations we can all relate to, which just happens to be set to music.

It’s the first of many tracks rich in humour and musicality in this impressive debut. Thanks For Listening is funny, atmospheric, sometimes gently ludicrous, sometimes rooted in reality and sometimes a little of both.

A low-key performer, he doesn’t move from the high stool in the corner of the room, creating an intimate atmosphere in which he can share confidences. However, any personal details, such as those revealed in a song about how to sustain a long-term relationship, which sadly didn’t quite work out for him, are strictly rationed – sprinkled sparingly over the hour.

Big issues such as climate change are addressed, while other numbers are just daft, such as riffing on a bank’s adverts. The diet advice to drink water directly from the Thames might be a bit of both – but either way, it leads to a jauntily inappropriate singalong. That’s not the only time there’s a touch of black humour – his story of a surprise birthday party which surprises the wrong people is a specially fine example – which serves to add another level to the show’s delicious complexity.

In Mackeith’s sharpest numbers, every line is a gag, while others take the time to establish an absurd reality – only to demolish it with a witty tagline. There are a couple of quip-and-run quickies, but most songs are mature, and performed in a mesmerising, honeyed style.

Having initially described himself as socially anxious, MacKeith concludes that all his compositions are about the things which trigger that, though that is such a broad net it’s possibly been back-engineered to impose a theme on a disparate collection of songs. And it certainly doesn’t cover the more surreal numbers.

But the concept allows him to end with a touch of sincerity – de rigueur for an Edinburgh hour, of course, but here expressed as classily as the rest of the show as he asks: ‘If you’re not scared, how can you be brave?’

It’s a thoughtful note on which to end an hour of songs that span the sublime to the ridiculous – mostly the latter – written and performed by a sophisticated talent. 

• Alex MacKeith: Thanks for Listening is at Underbelly Bristo Square

Review date: 16 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Underbelly Bristo Square