Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Along with Rob Auton, Johnny White Really-Really has cornered the market in whimsically poetic ruminations on the minutiae of ordinary life. Am/pm offers very much more of the same, so perhaps it’s on me that I wasn’t so completely charmed and engrossed as I have been previously, as all his trademark elements are present and correct.

After a gently strange preamble about playing cards containing bizarre esoteric symbols and possessing a ‘malevolent aura’, we get to the meat of the show. Provided that word ‘meat’ doesn’t suggest something more substantial than the mundane contemplations and fanciful daydreams from his job as a receptionist.

It’s ordinary stuff: his  boss showing him videos on his phone, him doing a run to Sainsbury’s to stock up the communal kitchen or very minor acts of defiance against the tedium of it all. It’s not all office-based, mind you. One routine concerns chopping onions, and specifically what mood it puts him in if a recipe does or does not require him to do that as the first step. It’s important stuff.

Elsewhere, he imagines alternative lives for himself as a train driver or astronaut, the archetypal ambitions of an innocent child maintained into adulthood.

There’s a quiet, soothing humanity to the understated pieces that capture the meandering thoughts of a man who’s lost his purpose but not his imagination.

White Really-Really’s language is so precise. Speaking of his playing cards, ’I lost them on the Lizard Peninsula’ just hits the right rhythm and specificity to be funny, even if, in cold black and white, there’s nothing inherently funny about the line. Likewise he knows instinctively that Strongbow Dark Fruit is the funniest cider to mention.

He performs with a gentle laugh in his eyes that frequently spreads to his lips. His delight that this quietly quirky writing is landing palpable and contagious. 

Yet appreciating and admiring all that is quietly wonderful about this comedian poet is not the same as being fully transported into his world and, for me, some of that connection was missing. But if you’re a fan of his lush imagery and eccentric observations, White Really-Really is serving up more of the same.

Review date: 14 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive)