Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Milo Edwards’ comedy has a masculine, muscular quality. It is stylish, intelligent and more interested in landing a dark laugh than earning anyone’s sympathy. 

Catamaran opens with jokes about 9/11 and, before long, Edwards has likened himself to both Bonnie Blue and Osama bin Laden. The Bonnie Blue reference draws a strange semi-boo from the crowd, offering an early indication of the audience’s politics and the limits of its appetite for provocation.

Catamaran charts a voyage for paternal intimacy, following the death of both his mother and father, docking in such unlikely quarters as Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 and his parents’ erotic letters in the ‘80s. With material that might easily invite sentimentality, Edwards is instinctively sympathy-spurning. Rather than mining the letters for emotional catharsis, he uses them as the starting point for a tightly constructed investigation into masculinity and how much we really want to know about our parents.

His frame of reference is unapologetically specific, though not particularly obscure. A former member of Cambridge Footlights who began his comedy career in Moscow, his hour moves through the Romanovs and Bolsheviks, dictators, Napoleon and James Joyce. It is the sort of historical name-checking likely to delight people who snigger along to Fin Taylor and Horatio Gould’s podcast Fin vs History. The pleasure lies less in learning anything new than in recognising familiar details from A-level history, deployed with brisk confidence amid contemporary political discourse.

Edwards’ political satire is strongest when attached to character and narrative. The highlight is an uproarious jaunt through 1980s Hong Kong with a group of textile-trading Essex boys, populated by characters with names like John Martini. It’s cheeky, swaggering storytelling enlivened by a talent for caricature which is more distinctive when he leaves Osama bin Laden to one side. 

There is enough material packed into Catamaran to leave little to chance. Its ideas, callbacks and narrative strands are neatly arranged, giving the hour compelling momentum even as Edwards jumps between family history, geopolitics and sexual notoriety. The construction is meticulous without becoming airless, and its darker jokes arrive with the assurance of someone who knows exactly how far he intends to push them.

Edwards’ reluctance to court affection can leave the show feeling slightly armoured, though it is also part of what makes Edwards as a performer. But that hardness is also integral to its appeal. Catamaran is a confident, densely written and frequently uproarious hour. Milo Edwards has fathered a beautiful bastard of a show.

Review date: 13 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Lauren Sneade
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire)