Sometimes when you’re putting together a Fringe schedule, you find yourself with some blank spaces that need filling. That’s not for a lack of shows, more just a lack of an even distribution of when these shows are taking place - if you’rre only there for four days and there are 17 shows you want to see between 7pm and 8pm, you simply cannot. And if you are at the Fringe, it seems a shame to be sitting around waiting until 5pm for your first show of the day. So it’s nice to add in some variety with stuff even I haven’t seen - enter Sam Lake (don’t). I know of Sam through reputation, but haven’t ever seen him live or even online, but people I trust like him and he’s on at a time we have to kill.
I’m sold very early doors. I’m not saying that’s 100% the fact that there’s an NYT Connections joke in here that is quite layered, but there’s a sizeable portion of it that is.
I also do enjoy that in one line, Lake cuts off the usual tension of the Edinburgh show 45 minute emotional turn - explaining that this show is about his mum, who died when he was 18 - whilst also getting an entirely unexpected but genuine belly laugh out of me. I’m not saying this is a unique take - we’re into the post-post-post-modernism stage of the idea of what a Fringe show is being normalised now, so nothing is original - but it is refreshing to see a dead mum show tackled on its own terms rather than instinctually hewing to the expected form. It frees him up.
I really like Lake’s (metaphorical) voice (not to say I don’t enjoy his actual voice too) - he’s able to veer between knowingly camp, quite deep, bitchy to heartfelt, in short spaces, without it ever feeling put on or affected. He’s clearly a thoughtful comic who has a knack for matching that with good jokes.
This is not his fault, or even a thing he has to contend with, but he’s specifically in Monkey Barrel 2, which I had forgotten existed until we got downstairs into the bar and it all came flooding back. And in my head, this is a weird late night room - memories of The Elvis Dead and knowing that Frankie Monroe is on here this year. That’s the sense memory, which is a fun preconception to battle against.