Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Some Fringe comedy shows are deep and meaningful explorations of personal struggle and revelation. And some, like Jack Barry's, are ostensibly just very funny hours about getting caned in Amsterdam with your dad.

Arriving relatively late to this year’s Fringe, Barry is all about the Good Vibes and cheerily preambles at his leisure. Or certainly appears to, in the light-hearted and roundabout manner of his opening. Such is the casualness of his 'hang', that when a punter suddenly interrupts to establish a connection with a routine, it's a little jarring when the comic warmly but firmly wrests control back of the narrative.

In his mid- to late-thirties and trying to ignore his receding hairline, Barry finds his friends are dropping away, having families and thinly disguised mid-life crises. But he's still reminiscing happily of his days taking ketamine. And, if anything, he's smoking more weed than ever.

He's been married for years, to an Argentinian no less, for all the exotic possibilities of cultural confusion that affords. In English, he's an instinctive joker. In his less fluent Spanish, he's robbed of those instincts, struggling with his newfound solemnity. But theirs' is an open relationship, with him having encouraged her to broaden her sexual horizons.

None of this is offered up as edgy, more as indicative of his open-minded approach to life and a chance for him to forge connections with others. Barry's easygoing manner characterises him as something of a drifter, seeking an easy life, the profundity of existence coming to him through a haze of marijuana. One hesitates to say that a man has penned the definitive routine about women's football. But though not particularly feminist or chauvinist, his armchair wisdom is highly compelling, certainly changing the way I view the game.

Still though, why is Barry performing this show, which seems like a fond but shallow farewell to the hedonism and indulgence of his twenties? Well, he lightly touches upon his mental health struggles. However, that's more to introduce the issues of his father, a singularly troubled man incapable of living in the moment. Persecuted by control freak tendencies, incapable of switching off and relaxing while on holiday, Barry Sr could single-handedly fill an entire series of the long-running Mad Dad feature on John Robins and Elis James' Radio 5 show

Leery of going into therapy at 70, Ian Barry is nevertheless intrigued enough about his son's lifestyle to Consent to going on a bonding trip to the Dutch capital with him, where the pair imbibe magic mushrooms.

Drugs tales can be a charmless exercise in storytelling, with the teller unable to recreate the hallucinatory experiences in the eyes and ears of those experiencing it second-hand, inevitably falling back on you-had-to-be-there platitudes. But while he does share some amusingly surreal snapshots of their trip, Barry focuses more on an affectionate portrayal of an uptight man gradually letting himself go a bit.

A dual coming-of-age account with oblique commentary on the shifting statuses of father-son relationships over time, presented as Two Go Mad In Holland, this is a warmly relatable and understatedly poignant hour from the optimistically engaging Barry, rendered with plenty of goofball self-deprecation and nonchalant wit.

Review date: 23 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire)