Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The Electric Head have won the  Galton & Simpson award for their scripted comedy, so of course they are at the Edinburgh Fringe without a script. Instead, Al Ronald and Cy Henty serve up a long-form improv show based on a couple of the audience’s real-life spooky experiences.

It’s quickly clear they are going to have their work cut out bettering the stories shared with the room. One woman told of how her sister inexplicably received a text from their dead father’s phone. Then a man told how he had emerged from a Harry Potter escape room in Cowgate early last November to see a genuine severed human head in the road. He said people had posed with it, thinking it was a Halloween prop, not the tragic victim of a bus crash.

The main story The Electric Head create thus involves two punters entering the escape room, before encountering an all-powerful demonic creature intent on spreading evil. Comedy inspiration struck when they made that nemesis JK Rowling, angered at how Henty had dressed Hermione.

In the second strand, a man is lured back to a stranger’s house on Halloween, only to discover he is a ‘pickle vampire’ – even they probably can’t explain how they got to the pickle bit – who had killed all his forefathers.

The pair sometimes seem at slightly cross-purposes as to where the story’s heading, but they find their way through, embracing the absurdity of any decision blurted out in panic and relentlessly pushing forward. Running gags work nicely and dead-ends quickly backed out of to keep the narrative on track.

Horror and comedy make good bedfellows, and the pair are effective at creating atmosphere from their performance. Looking scary or possessed seems to come naturally to Henty. For his part, Ronald looks a bit like a cut-price version of a certain Australian musical comedian. Let’s call him Temu Minchin. 

You roll with the punches in improv, and not everything works here, but between them the pair come up with enough tentpole ideas that can bear the weight of the absurd ideas. 

No, they didn’t best the actual stories volunteered by the audience. But their romp was more than entertaining enough in its own way.

Review date: 8 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House