Brighton Fringe comedy review

Candace Bryan was raised by a single dad in Memphis, Tennessee, deep in the Bible Belt and – as she likes to remind us – the murder capital of America. But has the lack of a  female role model growing up given her toxic masculinity, she wonders…

Certainly doing dumb fake-swagger jokes that sound like they should be accompanied by an air horn is something of a male comic trope, but Bryan does it well. And most importantly she does it a lot – for this show is relentlessly devoted to the jokes with a gag count other comics should envy. Some are excellent, some are just fine, but the tautness of the writing to pack so many into the hour is a great skill.

That’s probably her American sensibilities coming out, but she’s lived in Britain long enough to known that festival shows usually demand a narrative. The title Mom I’d Like To Find suggests an exhaustive search for her birth mother, though it isn’t, and she even dismisses the single-parent premise of the hour as ‘not that big a deal’. ‘I really needed something to write a show about,’ she says, dismissively 

Yet  her repressing emotions and her chequered dating history all hark back to her childhood.  Under the bonnet, all her stories, from having no maternal instinct herself to a hedonistic lifestyle, are subtly connected.

The awful and damaged men she’s gone out with are a fruitful seam of funny, sometimes dirty, material as she describes sticking with clearly unhealthy relationships, and the deranged things partners have said to her. Bryan’s bisexual, but it’s telling she’s go not such horror stories about dating women.

With a relatively unchanging delivery, Bryan doesn’t build up momentum or grab the room’s energy by the throat, but the gag-forward approach is hugely effective. And she does allow herself a moment of introspection towards the end to wrap the hour up neatly. Getting closure over her missing relationship with her mum would have been narratively convenient, but she makes a virtue of the fact that life isn’t so neat.

Returning in the guise of her long-lost mum is an unnecessary addendum, merely a sackful of callbacks that add nothing new. But this is a small quibble for what’s otherwise a punchy hour of fast-paced, joke-heavy stand-up.

Review date: 26 May 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Secret Comedy Club