Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Well this is just the funniest and most commanding debut to land in Edinburgh for many years. A young British-Nigerian comic, born in London and raised in Lagos, Ayoade Bamgboye hits many of the expected beats of an introductory show, but infuses her story with mischief, mysticism and a totally unique comic voice right out of the gate.

The voice itself is an interesting signifier with Bamgboye. She proves that she’s an incredible vocal chameleon, but for the most part keeps her powder dry in that regard, instead slipping between a Nigerian and a British accent. Whichever one she’s using at the time always sounds like the ‘real’ one. The shift between voices can denote characters in the stories she’s telling, but also represent different ways of thinking – two different outlooks coming out of the same head: a perfect encapsulation of the dual-culture experience.

When she tells us her life story, you can feel her in the process of fablemaking. Moving gracefully, magnetically, with a dancer’s attention to physical detail, she checks in with audience members about whether they were born vaginally or by caesarean, and what their name means. ‘Vaginally; don’t know’ says John, a middle-aged white man. 

The way you come into this world matters, says Bamgboye. Ayoade means crown of joy, and she is a twin, the first to arrive by 30 seconds but still considered the junior under Yoruba custom, which holds that the first twin to arrive is sent into the world as a scout for the second one, ‘to check everything is copacetic and report back’.

As a young girl, she believes, she had the gift of foresight, but it couldn’t prepare her for her return to the UK and its ‘undercurrent of malevolence – a Hobbesian state of nature’ that made her aware of her race for the first time, but also amplified a nascent feminism and opened her up to the pleasures of misery. ‘Mesmerising,’ she murmurs, ‘…so delicious to be sad.’

Let’s just pause here and appreciate: what other Fringe debutant is talking about these ideas? With language this rich? Her words are carefully considered and consistently hilarious, bubbling out of a mixture of Nigerian formality and British idioms. In terms of comparison, only Jacqueline Novak comes to mind, and she’s been perfecting her style for a while.

Bamgboye’s mind just makes unique connections and distinctions, as evidenced in the show’s longest section, the World Cup of Peril, where she collaborates with the audience to tease out the difference between Britain’s favourite ways to be in trouble. Do we find ourselves more often in pickles or jams? What’s the qualitative difference between a bind and an ordeal, and which do we prefer? 

In fact, this is the only section that occasionally feels like it’s repeating itself, where the rest of the time she moves between topics and thoughts with the same lightfootedness with which she moves around the room.

Near the end of the narrative, she briefly moves to Hungary to take a job as a director’s assistant. The move is in direct response to the untimely death of her father, a man who told her she could do anything, then passed away before she could challenge the idea.

 Well, sometimes Dads can have the gift of foresight also, and on the strength of this startlingly original, intelligent and funny debut, I’m inclined to think she can do anything too.

Review date: 14 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard