Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Welcoming his audience with a montage of PS1 graphics and naming his show after the fighting game franchise, Roger O’Sullivan primes us for a nostalgia show about video games and growing up in the 1990s, and maybe that’s what it was genuinely supposed to be at some point. 

In its finished form, Fekken has those qualities, O’Sullivan has also stealthily inserted a surprisingly emotional and very funny parallel show about his relationship with his father, a reticent Irish farmer who seems to be a refugee from another time, a time before emotion, geopolitics and modern social customs. ‘The only way I could make him proud is if I killed him in a field over a land dispute,’ is how O’Sullivan puts it. 

When the comedian decided to go his own way and pursue his interests instead of taking up the family business, he made a Faustian pact: taking up his own destiny at the cost of never being able to relate to his dad.

But this is an affectionate show rather than a maudlin one, and O’Sullivan’s best material celebrates his dad’s foibles: his house rule that they could only watch films based on true stories; his inordinate pride over the aerial photo of his house; even his charming old-school ‘racism’ which is instantly punctured by anyone willing to sign him up to a customer loyalty programme.

O’Sullivan performs with a relaxed, methodical air, patiently rolling out some of the best-written jokes of the Fringe. In his low key way he bats out several one-liners which would make perfect candidates for those terrible broadsheet listicles on the subject.

Like many up-and-coming comedians his age, he also shows a Mat Ewins influence, and has created several great visual gags for the screen which serve as neat dividers for the chapters of his story. The blending of personal material, surreal wordplay and madcap video edits is achieved with a surprising sophistication for someone so early in his career. 

Further into the hour, his even-keeled presence is cast in a surprising new light when he reveals a diagnosis that would seem to indicate that his sense of balance is hard-won, but it’s just another way in which there’s more to O’Sullivan than first meets the eye.

Review date: 12 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Hoots @ Apex