And so, all good things must come to an end, and we reach our final show of the Fringe for this year. We end on a high, though, or as close to a guarantee of that as you could ask for. We ended the 2019 Fringe with Jordan Brookes, so why not repeat that five years later?
I saw a very early preview of this over a year ago at ARG, which Brookes told me the other night would really have not been so different from the finished thing. Ha. Ha ha ha. Come off it. Yes, there are a lot of recognisable elements from that preview that have survived through to Fontanelle, as well as some things that didn’t, but tonally, oh boy is there a world of difference. I remember the message and tone of that preview being considerably more positive than the finished product. I think what I’ve taken from this is some insight into Brookes’ process, for want of a less wanky word - the individual pieces or mechanical bits come first; the way you use those bits to tell a story, and what story you tell, comes later. It’s an interesting thought to realise how much the building blocks can be rearranged.
Of course, all of that aside, what we get tonight is absolute madness of the highest order. Actual musical numbers about the Titanic - there are harmonies and all! (and I’ll leave you to extrapolate what else that must mean from there). The physicality is all there, applied in different ways, aiming for more pointed laughs.
This is a different, distinct take on the same question posed in my write-up of Rose Matafeo’s show - what do they have to prove? Matafeo and Brookes won the prize in consecutive years, and Brookes at least plays the part of being much more obsessed with the idea of it. Continuing on from his prolonged joke on Twitter during Covid of being the last person to ever be awarded the prize, and the longest ever holder of it, even the custom song playing as the crowd leaves at the end is instigating for a change in the rules so he could win it again. I don’t think he sincerely cares about it, but it’s a fascinating way to play with the idea of what that means to a performer.
Above all, of course, is the discomfort of a Jordan Brookes show - you can never quite relax into it, always slightly on edge. There’s more of a glint in his eye, though, a playfulness in the discomfort that was maybe less so before this. And even through that playfulness being somewhat disarming, you’re still on some level waiting for the other shoe to drop, and sometimes it does. But he now has an audience increasingly on board with this, ready for this, up for this, and it’s a lot of fun watching him play with that.