Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Evaldas Karosas is from Lithuania – and if you've made up some stereotypes of the Baltic state based on absolutely nothing, you're not alone, as he confesses to doing the same about other countries. 

Chances are you might be right, though, with the comic portraying his former Soviet homeland as grindingly poor, its men driven by an unreconstructed toxic masculinity, and its populace carrying an inner darkness.

A brooding sense of threat certainly lurks in some of Karosas’s routines, such as his story of a friend whose father killed a guy, giving them an edge that heightens the wit. And even by Lithuanian standards, his family were deprived, with the comic using his surprising reaction to virtual reality porn as a witty and unexpected example.

Karosas comes across as a friendly but untrustworthily roguish guy, who has imported some unacceptable behaviours from his harsh motherland, where some of the more high-level human rights are luxuries that cannot be afforded.

He advocates for smacking children and has little truck with over-diagnosing mental illness. Social anxiety should not be deemed a psychological condition, he asserts, it's normal. Now schizophrenia, that’s a mental illness he can respect as that’s not something anyone would claim just to seem interesting. 

Such primitive views are, we hope, ironic – though Karosas keeps it tantalisingly ambiguous. He is at least progressive enough to observe unhealthy male behaviour, such as dealing badly with rejection in the nightclub - and indeed in life.

He portrays himself as a slightly more hapless loser, unable to compete with a precision-engineered sex toy and finding his 5ft 10in frame has no currency in the dating apps where women impose a strict 6ft cutoff. 

Behaviour like that suggests women are only marginally less basic than men, he asserts, as proven by their obsession with romantasy, the genre that dresses up porn as literature. However, he does admire the female ability to store up the erotic images for later, and not require instant gratification.

He jokes that performing in his second language means he’s only operating at about 60 per cent of his potential. But his combination of wry satire, proper jokes and confident delivery means that even throttled, he is better than a great many of his peers. A very capable man, indeed. 

Review date: 29 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (Cabaret Voltaire)