Edinburgh Fringe theatre review

We all know comedians like Rodney Black, making unpleasant jokes wrapped in a veil of irony that supposedly makes them acceptable. But how much is a stand-up making rape jokes culpable for gendered violence in wider society? That’s the question posed by Sadie Pearson’s sombre play.

Initially, we see Black (Ben Willows)  grappling a little with his act, knowing that his transgressive material and don’t-give-a-damn swagger works, but also craving cultural approval from tastemakers like Stewart Lee. 

But it’s not long until he realises the commercial pull of the most offensive material, and ditches any pretence of satirising it. He gets feted by the right-wing press and the toxic manosphere, egged on by his nakedly avaricious, amoral agent (Bertie Taylor-Smith) and apparently welcomed into the mainstream.

As written, his stand-up isn’t at all funny. It’s crass and laboured, couched in a sort of tedious sub-Bill-Hicks-style philosophising about being a bold voice ‘saying the unsayable’, the usual self-glorifying guff. However it’s not a huge leap of faith to imagine similar routines that could be made to work in the hands of a real-life comedian, sharper and less blatantly odious than this character.

It gets Black the girls too – targeting audience members to treat as just another meaningless conquest, not real people. Explicit mention is made of Louis CK’s creepy behaviour, in case you didn’t pick up on the type. But we know from the very beginning that one woman was found dead, her jaw dislocated, near one of Black’s gigs. To what extent is he responsible?  Is what’s just a joke to the male comic a tangible threat to women? But mainly the comic’s concerned about whether his blossoming career will survive the scandal.

Black’s rather thinly drawn, with little difference from his persona on-stage and off, a nasty piece of work all round. And while this story may raise questions about ‘cancel culture’ and the idolisation of misogynist men, they are all too superficially covered. 

Merida Beasley stalks the stage as a character called only Woman, a compelling, haunting presence representing the victim, or even just a conscience that would otherwise be absent from both Black’s comedy and personality. Her interventions are hard-hitting, but how bleakly ironic that it is not her voice we hear most of, but the men’s.

Review date: 26 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House