Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

This is different, worth a go. Rob Alderson’s show will be different every day of the Fringe, culminating in a full performance of all the ideas and contributions collated over the month, magically spun together to make a whole show.  It’s an ambitious project and  I hope it pays off.  

The comic is taking a risk here, putting himself at the mercy of the general public by making them his writers’ room. Their ideas, turns of phrase, some Christmas cracker level of gag writing are theirs, not his.  He is a born facilitator of others’ creativity.  He has a warm, secondary school drama teacher vibe, smiley and inclusive and clearly used to coaxing people into collaboration.  

Today, he was stuck with an audience of four, including me, and we were all willing to chip in our 10 cents worth.  For anyone who thinks that stand-up is easy, this proves it’s not and the audience contributions will have to be tarted up massively to make it a decent final show.

Using simple questions to coax the audience into contributing, he soon gathers a flipchart of ideas, rates gags contrived from their suggestions and intersperses them with some pertinent observations about individual creativity and the motivation to find your metier.

It’s a warm, kind show and had he pitched it more as a change to ‘find your own creative self in an hour', rather than improv with flipcharts, he’d have people queuing down the stairs, if not round the block.  

If the show is not comedy gold, then for once it *is* the audience’s fault.  TBC is a proper experiment, the result of which won’t be known for a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, it’s a well-timed, good-natured start to your Fringe day. 

Review date: 8 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House