Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

As you can guess from the title, this is a show about how Tom Rosenthal thinks people perceive him. But he hasn’t just twisted a pop culture reference to get a title, as he really is trying to combine his stories with the career arc of the Arctic Monkeys.

He fears people will come to this show expecting to see Johnny Goodman from Friday Night Dinner, only to be disappointed that he’s a stand-up in his own right. After all, he – and a lot of other fans – turned on Alex Turner’s outfit when they performed unfamiliar versions of their hits at Glastonbury 2023.  Did the Sheffield band have a duty to give the audience what they expected rather than indulge their own artistic aims? Does Rosenthal?

This is a fairly straightforward parallel to grasp, but the show throws in a lot more ideas and routines that are usually interesting and/or funny, but jostling to form a single train of thought. It leaves the supposedly big-concept hour seeming surprisingly bitty, even if the bits do work on their own.

After addressing the labels of comedian and sitcom actor, Rosenthal turns to ‘celebrity’, an excuse to relive his appearance on various TV shows bearing that label, including an appealing routine imagining him camping it up on Banged Up as a luvvie in a prison full of real inmates.

Fame has weird consequences and Rosenthal is discombobulated to find himself on Wikifeet, to which he reacts with heightened outrage, especially when he learns how he rates there. It speaks to how he’s sensitive to criticism despite trying not to care what people think when he’s creating.

Another silly standalone routine revolves around how the teenage comic practised kissing on his hand, recreated with an exaggerated act-out – although its connection to the rest of the hour is tenuous at best.

One segment culminates in him channeling Stewart Lee in his repetitive, aggressive sarcasm, though that approach is not present elsewhere – or at least not in the same intensity. He does, however, get righteously pedantic about a tote bag he got off Amazon, a consequence, he says, of his autism. That’s another label he’s acquired, thanks to a recent diagnosis.

The final way people see him – and it’s a big one  in the current geopolitical climate – is being Jewish. He doesn’t consider himself as such, particularly, despite acknowledging and appreciating the Jewish heritage on his father’s side. This complexity is too much to get deeply into here, so Rosenthal instead mocks a bizarre offhand reference to his dad, the sports commentator Jim Rosenthal, that David Baddiel made in his book Jews Don’t Count. A line that inspires a tongue-in-cheek beef that  Rosenthal Jr keeps returning to.

No, this is not Johnny Goodman doing stand-up. Nor is the Arctic Monkeys’ crowd-displeasing Glastonbury set. It’s something in between, with amusing routines about each of Rosenthal’s chosen identity signifiers remaining stubbornly distinct from each other, despite the comic’s too-ambitious intention to use the band as an overarching theme.

Review date: 2 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy