Writer and Director: Dan Leith
Defiling Gravity features likeable Irish comedian and musician Dan Leith delivering an engaging hour of adult stand-up and original songs. Set on an aeroplane that is perilously close to crashing, the show is loosely centred around misadventures in the performer’s life.
The best of a decent haul of jokes comes early on in an anecdote about Leith’s great-grandad, a cabinet maker who helped fit out the Titanic. Only the fortuitous illness of a family member kept the man from travelling on the ship’s maiden voyage. “It’s not funny,” Leith tells us with deadpan earnestness, “but it’s one hell of an icebreaker”.
Whatever luck great-grandad had seems to have passed Leith by as he takes us on an amiable meander through, variously, a nasty smash on his girlfriend’s motorcycle (“dumb, but a cool way to almost die”), a bad heart attack in Iceland (“the shop, not the country”), and a reckless shortcut on a windswept walk that left him nearly unable to move. Aside from being a helpful vehicle for gags and songs, Leith’s tale of woe has a self-motivational purpose: a reminder that, however risky he finds it to do stand-up, what happens off stage can be worse. The tone is confessional and warm without ever feeling mawkish.
Leith plays a mean mini-guitar, and an occasional backing track adds variety to a half dozen well-crafted comic songs. A highlight is a catchy tune called Karen, written, Leith tells us, “just because nobody ever wrote a song about anyone called Karen.” She is a “Hitler with a peach moustache,” we learn, which is probably why the audience ends up singing along in a rousing chorus of “Fuck you, Karen”.
Anticipate audience interaction throughout. A hilarious song about puddings leads into an extended riff on the perils of anal sex during a bout of IBS, one of a series of scatological references that probably make Defiling Gravity adults only—two weeks at Edinburgh Fringe beckon.
Reviewed on 3 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
The Reviews Hub Star Rating