Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Walking on stage with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs singing the children’s song On Top Of Spaghetti, Lucas Jefcoate primes his audience for a show with more personality than he ends up delivering. Not that a fake plate of spaghetti is exactly the height of clowning madness, but the flightless and slightly generic hour that follows could do with more of that inspiration.

Jefcoate sets out his stall early as a ‘beta’ who’s all the more obsessed with masculinity because of his self-perceived failure to live up to those ideals. He's a very young man though, and it shows in his perception of what masculinity means: many of his routines revolve around the idea that he should be fearless, muscular or able to hunt. And of course there’s his penis, the ultimate lens through which masculinity might be measured. 

There are moments in this show where, largely due to his choice of topics, he starts to feel like a weird AI crossbreed of every young male comedian ever.

The narrative justification for all this is tied into the symbolic meaning of the meatballs and spaghetti – he had an undescended testicle when he was younger. Not anymore, you understand, just when he was a boy. From the way he wields this information in the show, you’d think he’s angling for a six-part Baby Reindeer style prestige miniseries.

The joke writing is reasonably solid, if a little easy, and he's a comfortable stage presence. Demographically he fits in better with the Fringe crowd, but I think his material is probably better suited to club nights where there's less of an onus on artistry. He’s aiming for a sort of Ed Night mode of self-aware Gen Z edgelordism, but there’s not much poetry or imagination to his words. 

You don’t have to have an interesting biography to have an interesting point of view, but Jefcoate has neither (yet); his revelations that he can’t swim and enjoys going on his phone really need some pretty exceptional writing to get them over the line, and he’s a long way off that for now. 

There’s a weird bit at the end where he reflects on whether he should really be telling these jokes poking fun at capitalism or the patriarchy, but he hasn’t actually done either of those things, at least not so you'd notice. 

There's potential there, but this is a clear case of a comedian whose debut should have waited a few years. Some people come into their own when they have a few lines on their face.

Review date: 26 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy