Monkey Barrel 2
Aug 9-11, 13-25
17:45
Milo Edwards bounces onto stage and opens with an apology. Last year’s show was the heart-string tugging ‘Awards Bait’. He tried that and didn’t even get a nomination, so we’re assured that this year he’ll be back to his standard podcast schtick of mild misanthropy, inappropriate gesticulatory representations of made up sexual afflictions, and a barrage of thoughts, wonderings, and obscure facts. Milo is true to his word, and it’s certainly ‘the podcast demographic’ who will get the most out of this engaging, regularly funny, often unique, hour of loosely linked jokes, anecdotes, and flights of fantasy. Provide your brain is ready to engage at break-neck speed over an hour crammed to bursting with material.
There is something for everyone across the course of this hour, opening with some fairly standard material about ‘poshness’ and ski-ing (Which had more than a sniff of Billy Connolly’s famous ‘tobogganing’ sketch about it) to warm up the room. He quickly veers into more surreal territory, with Winston Churchill trying to flog second hand cars and Nonagenarian ‘Bowls’ sharks utilising spite as an elixir of youth. Edward’s comedy chops are fully on display in the opening thirty minutes, and some particularly fine wordplay and physical comedy combining to create a section in which he reels off five different metaphors for the consequences on male life choices if they had a similar reproductive process as women. I will never be able to hear another almost empty ketchup bottle being raspily squeezed without feeling queasy. He also manages to fire out what I assume will be one of the contenders for ‘best joke at the Fringe, with a genuinely unique Prince Andrew joke that takes half as long to tell as the audience consequently spends laughing at it. There is lots to admire here, and the regularity with which he delivers podcasts clearly has an effect on Milo’s confidence, content and delivery.
This is not a podcast however, and the sheer volume of material in this set ends up being somewhat of a hinderance to the overall enjoyment of the show. Pockets of laughter were consistently rippling across the room for the whole 60 minutes, however no one section of the audience were guffawing away for prolonged periods of time. Milo’s director has said that ‘the ideal audience member for this show is Milo, he’s the only person who’d get every one of the jokes’, and this presents itself as an issue in a small, sweaty, off brand Harry Potter themed escape room in the bowels of Edinburgh’s old town. After the first 30 minutes I found myself zoning out occasionally, as brief sections which could have been developed and mined for further laughs, or surreal depths, were instead skipped over. Delivery occasionally felt rushed, though I’m not sure if Milo himself would want to edit his show to be tighter.
Throughout the performance he seemed quite comfortable, and I can see why his podcasts which cover an incredibly broad spectrum of areas, to varying degrees of esotericism are popular. However this format in which listeners (or in this case audience members) essentially play ‘trading cards’ with the little known facts and hidden nuggets of popular history which Edward’s fires out (‘got’, ‘got’, ‘need!’) left me feeling that there was a more transactional nature to the experience than I necessarily enjoyed. Removal of these aspects would easily reduce the denseness of the experience, and allow more room for development of the very funny ‘stand up’ material which, for me, should be the main attraction in his performances.
There are many obvious comparisons to peers such as Robin Ince, and in one very funny section on immigration he neatly pays homage to Stewart Lee while injecting his own surreal and pertinent metaphors. This hour of high quality material delivered in scattered fashion left me wondering what a finely honed and sharply directed Milo Edwards would look and sound like. I suspect they’d look very much like a 5 star comedian.
Ewan Law
themumble.uk 