Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Sam Jay is a strikingly abrasive act, eschewing eye contact, staring into the middle distance while speaking; often holding her mic in crossed arms; making big, sweeping generalisations, with little in the way of concessions for non-Americans in her cultural references; brooking no challenge to her authority and pandering not a jot. Hers is stand-up delivered as gospel.

The American comic has had trouble acclimatising to Scotland. And it's clearly been a long festival without home comforts such as copious ice and the food she recognises, her annoyance tempered by an awareness that maybe the US is the international outlier. She's clearly happier in her comfort zone and, you sense, pretty keen to get back there.

And by God she's fatalist. With bleakly funny certainty she asserts that humanity is approaching its endgame, circling the drain. Though not instinctively contemptuous of younger generations, she maintains that freedom of expression and identity has condemned the emerging youth to flakiness, unable to stand up and fight for anything. 

As a gay woman, she feels entitled to be suspicious of non-binary identities. I'm not sure Prince's queer credentials were ever as clearly defined as she portrays them, his death having conveniently prevented him from clarifying. But surely one notoriously playful cross-dresser and mega-wealthy superstar who died almost a decade ago can't be used to dismiss a whole demographic's grievances?

Perhaps it's fair comment that victimised non-binary kids haven't yet fought the way that her generation of gay people fought for acceptance. And maybe that's self-serving, reactionary bollocks. Jay's great strength and weakness, depending on your perspective I suspect, is that she often sees only the wood, not the trees, making grand, persuasive statements about huge swathes of people, movements and ideologies that nevertheless don't stand up too much critical scrutiny afterwards.

Bracing, often refreshingly provocative and with a plain-speaking, grouchy orneriness, Jay certainly pricks and rides roughshod over liberal sensitivities. She can decry the inhibition and awkwardness of her six-year-old great-niece, socially stunted by her addiction to computer games, quoting specific conversations they've had, extrapolating a generation's ruin from her own direct experience.

Her attributing Puff Daddy's crimes to a charisma that no future wannabe mogul and serial sexual abuser might possess however, goes beyond being contrarian and insensitive for the sake of it, just shock humour without any logical basis or redeeming insight. Unlike, say, her observation on OJ Simpson acquittal, which she persuasively argues for as a mass, emancipatory moment where black people got to buck a system rigged against them.

Musing on Jeffrey Dahmer as another master of his twisted craft, never to be emulated, citing the disturbed family background that likely contributed to his killing spree, she also moves from boundary-pushing sympathy for the devil to charmless, outright victim blaming. 

Reflecting more directly on the US political situation, she attends her first rodeo in Houston, observing with keen interest a world that's completely alien to her. Trump's electoral success didn't come out of nowhere as far as she's concerned, she can plainly see the divides between Red and Blue State America, the heartlands and the coastal cities. Once again, she plumps for a binary dialectic, two world entirely alienated from each other, when surely, surely, there has to be more nuance than that? There must be some people in Texas who are fine with a trans man giving birth, you can't speak for an entire state without a glint in your eye to suggest that you're joking.

I certainly wouldn't accuse Jay of arriving at her opinions frivolously. When, as a lesbian, she ardently maintains that scissoring feels unnatural, period, she's exploring something deeply personal from an unexpected angle, confounding preconceptions. Obama's electoral victory probably was a factor in Trump's as White America reasserted control, narrowing the founding fathers' prescriptions to exclude others once again.

She closes on a perfunctory account of almost having sex with a white woman for the first time, in the UK, but leaves the anecdote a little open-ended, its meaning opaque, as she abruptly bowls out of the venue, with her confrontational, take-me-as-I-am attitude very much intact. Very much splitting the room, some in the audience having howled at her, others sitting stony-faced and a little shell-shocked, that's evidence of a distinctive performer if ever there was one.

Review date: 23 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard