Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

At the end of his last show, Pierre Novellie raised the troubling notion that – if you think about it – most of the best moments in comedy could be seen as laughing at people with neurodivergent conditions.

Well, in Must We? he serves a lot more instances of his autism, making him act in ridiculous ways, which we can only assume it’s OK to chuckle at, given that it’s him who’s sharing them. And the tales – involving industrial quantities of Rinse Aid, rye bread and dried pasta, among others – are farcically good.

Novellie, who’s this year ditched his trademark velvet smoking jacket for a natty powder blue suit, gives some thought to the workings of the Fringe, where ‘just a really funny hour of comedy’ can be intended as a diss for a talented stand-up who fails to reframe your entire universe while delivering the LOLs. More pertinently, he has a brilliant and informative extended metaphor as to what draws comedians back to this place every year. 

In Must We?, Novellie doesn’t go out of his way to trumpet any paradigm-shifting epiphanies, feeling like a looser collection of stories and observations than usual, impeccably told, even if occasionally over-egged. Underpinning the personal tales is his description of his autism as a ‘surfeit of logic’, if not common sense, an entirely different commodity. He has plenty of self-effacing anecdotes to prove the difference.

And when directed outwards, that dogged reasoning makes him a master of withering sarcasm. The contempt he has for imperial measures is delightful – and  a fine example of his elegant mastery of the language, conjuring up enduring images. His description of Diet Coke is another unforgettable metaphor.

Must We? ties up its themes better than it first seems. His unhealthy relationship with food is because he uses treats as a reward mechanism, with a similar motivator popping up in other stories. There’s also less successful, but nonetheless relatable, thread about how all attempts to escape the drudgery of life – such as by becoming a stand-up – are all doomed to fail.

His now-traditional late-show pivot from self-deprecating to something more substantial comes here via Dutch euthanasia campaigner Zoraya ter Beek, who dropped a moral cluster bomb with her legal fight to end her life, setting a precedent with which Novellie is deeply uncomfortable. Nor is he the only one. 

With her stance tying into previous stories, it turns out Novellie really did have a theme after all – even while providing that oh-so elusive ‘really funny hour of comedy’.

Review date: 2 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett