Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Deage Paxton is undoubtedly right that we should be able to laugh at anything, that nothing should be off-limits. Yet he sorely tests that premise in a show steeped in juvenility, full of unabashed sex and ill-advised behaviour.

Incidentally, there was a weird vibe in the room on the night I caught it. Introducing himself with the story of an act of kindness on a train that revealed how mentally fragile he is since the collapse of his nine-year relationship, the North-Eastern comic was performing to an audience of just five. These included myself, a couple in the front row serving as the sole sounding board for his routines' relatability, a friend and his current girlfriend.

Was it more or less appropriate for Paxton to share this woman's bedroom intimacies with a small (or even large) gathering of strangers, after devoting the larger part of his set to his ex? I'm not sure as it was awkward. Though to be fair, the girl seemed to be enjoying herself.

Paxton doesn't present himself as a catch. His first time swimming with his ex, he affected to drown her for japes, a bizarre tonal shift from the emotional disclosure of the intro. When he recalls them having sex, her fulfilment came without his direct involvement.

The give and take of relationships is attested to in a rather good acoustic song about testing boundaries and being careful what you wish for. However, such wit and subtlety is seldom, if ever, shared again. Paxton tends to favour contrived pull-back and reveal gags that cast him as emasculated, often with the tiresome insinuation that they might make him gay.

Besides, there are only so many fingers that can disappear up arses and choking situations before they start to lose their experimental, risqué edge. He at least portrays himself as attentive to his current partner's pleasure, with scientific enquiry informing his approach to her orgasm. Yet straight after, he's spectacularly ungallant recalling a May to December relationship, the laddishness boorishly regressive.

Paxton's goofy mein and blithe facility for grasping the wrong end of the stick also inform his interactions with kids, the sheer wrongness of the punching down and the playing with paedophilia paranoia justifying the bits, though they're not exactly expressive of creative ambition.

There's a further tonal stumble as he blunders into trying to be progressive about trans rights. Observing the contretemps between a security guard and a fellow shopper in a budget store, Paxton seems unaware that the celebrity he likens the guard to has been subject to scurrilous rumours about their gender for much of their life, making them a distracting choice. Yet it's the class snobbery he applies to the aggressor in the exchange that appals, based on the flimsiest of evidence as he delivers it.

Similarly, he goes out of his way to be culturally respectful around religious customs in Thailand, before launching into the graphically sordid account of a sex show he witnessed there. At least this time round, the contrast seems deliberately abrupt.

There are some appreciable laughs in Paxton recalling the bonding, transgressive humour his family enjoyed over the passing of his grandmother. Yet his closing, sung appeal for the inclusivity and communal aspects of confounding taboo feels like a hollow defence, bolted on for the sake of shallow excuse.

Review date: 15 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Stand 3 and 4