Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Milo Edwards’ Fringe show from last year, Voicemail, sounds like a raw affair for the performer if not for the audience. It ran in the aftermath of both his parents dying of cancer in quick succession, with his mum passing away only a month before the start of the festival.

Whether the tragedy of that experience was communicated to the audience is more ambiguous. As he reports in this new show, critics spoke of a lack of sentimentality, and said he was ‘too funny’ on the death of his father. Complaining about these reviews, he says, is his current stage of grief.

Sentimental returns to the same topic with a little more distance and perspective, but is unlikely to beat the ‘too funny’ charges as it’s frequently uproarious, with greased up machine-tooled gags rattling out across the hour giving very little space for breath.

The first 20 minutes is especially dark, and all the better for it, as Edwards wonders how to dispose of his tubs of ‘parent powder’ and takes his Nan to task for outliving her daughter, blowing a party popper on stage every time he says something particularly bracing.

Listeners to his podcast Trashfuture will know Edwards as a socialist political commentator, and there are several stretches in this show which allow him to air some very legitimate grievances against the Labour Party and the Dutch (turns out we’re subsidising their national grid with British windfarms, which is annoying), although the Tories aren’t much touched upon, potentially too obvious a target. The jokes in this section are just as good, though lacking the close-to-the-bone forcefulness of his best material.

The touching emotional crescendo is contractually present albeit tongue in cheek, taking the form of a tribute to KwikFit – a way to say thank you after one of their branches let his terminally ill mum use their toilet. You couldn’t say he’s a performer who necessarily seems at ease with sentiment, but the feeling is very real.

Review date: 15 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Tron)