Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Andy Barr is a comedian who doesn’t really want to do comedy. Or rather he’s very wary about following any of the genre’s conventions, making him a very slippery customer indeed.

He promises us this is going to be a straightforward hour, performed as himself, after a number of high-concept shows – hence the idea this is his ‘true’ debut. Believe that at your peril. 

His observational routines are deliberately unreliable, he over-analyses his material to the point of distraction, and revels in the weird energy that stifles momentum as soon as it builds up.

Despite the self-sabotaging, this is more identifiable as stand-up than many ‘anti-comedy’ shows, a disguise which actually makes it even harder to get a handle on quite where he’s coming from.

His persona, if it is a persona, is of a (barely) functioning alcoholic, slightly belligerent toward the idea of the audience enjoying themselves. He deigns to deliver jokes, some of which are rather good, but wrapped in layers of irony or irrelevant context to ensure they can’t be simply enjoyed at face value. 

For example, a riff on the ‘apple a day’ maxim starts clearly enough, but then he makes it way more involved than is needed, which is followed by him breaking down why it didn’t land well.

The impression is of a man using humour to try to block out life’s harsh realities, but fighting a losing battle – as if jokes are the planks of wood he nails over the door of his consciousness to keep the zombie horde away, but their arms keep breaking through. Or, as he so eloquently puts it: ‘If you remove whimsy’s mask you must gaze once more into the face of horror’.

For he can be lyrical – there’s even a smattering of poetry – and the   strange phraseology he sometimes uses is clearly carefully chosen to discombobulate.

The closest he gets to conventional anecdotal stand-up is speaking about the London inner-city school where he teaches – though denying most of the unruly stereotypes you might have of such an establishment. And this is only a relatively short section of the show.

At the start he tells us he was going to follow the Fringe formula of mining grief for comedy, but decided against it, although there is a bleak section about mental health and a suicidal man on a train platform that, true to form, isn’t narratively neat.

He also confesses from the start that he hadn’t got a decent ending to the show, and sure enough he stuffs the landing.

But as frustrating as some of his tricksiness can be, it keeps you on your toes and is never dull. Barr jokes that this might be a final roll of the dice before accepting his fate as a white male comedian – punditry on GB News. He seems a long way from that, even if he hasn’t quite squared the circle of getting laughs while wilfully abandoning most of the tried-and-tested techniques which would make that easier. But he’s on an intriguing path.

Review date: 17 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard