Writer: Milo Edwards

Director: Delyth Jones

Warning: content from this review may appear in a future Milo Edwards show if it misses the point. Critics are just one of several subjects that anchor Edwards’ 65-minute set Sentimental, arriving at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho for a single filmed performance, lampooning write-ups from a previous tour based on the death of Edwards’ parents a few years ago, so sensitive critics should tread carefully for fear of becoming future material. Edwards has plenty more to say about death in this show, first performed in 2023 and since toured internationally, in a broad-ranging discussion of mortality, British everyday life and the small things that make you want to scream.

Revisiting a show he has now performed many times, Edwards still makes the material feel fresh and alarmingly topical as the big themes about bereavement, the administration of death and being orphaned by the age of 30 sit alongside angst about efficient bin collections and small boats, as though Britain had failed to move on at all in the last two years. Except, of course, it hasn’t, so boiling down UK voting behaviour to those two issues provokes one of the show’s most animated sections as the concept of international beneficence is amusingly outweighed by individual suburban concerns – wryly illustrated with a hand-drawn graph where human compassion and refuse-related outrage intersect.

Edwards is particularly adept at spinning out his themes and taking the audience through a number of different story points before returning to a central axis, things that make him feel sentimental. As the show moves seamlessly from Danish wind farmer owners getting rich on British electricity prices through shameless politicians misunderstanding what the Second World War was for to the enduring nature of the “Blitz spirit” as his fictional avatars take a secret pleasure at their neighbours’ homes being destroyed, Edwards remains in control of the strands of Sentimental and how the life and death of family members have shaped his life.

Affection for his parents and 97-year-old grandmother Peg are the throughline of the show, along with some of the peculiarities and bizarre expectations that accompany terminal illness and death, but Edwards mines it all for material that is both funny and practically true. What should you do with the ashes of people who can’t be scattered in their favourite place if that happens to be Liberty of London; how do you manage a cantankerous nan who outlived her own daughter and upset the order of things, and what can you do when you only inherit a quarter of a house shared with siblings? Sentimental doesn’t have the answers but is ready to laugh at the questions.

Filmed with a warm-up from Hugh Davies, whose dour music-based 10-minute slot riffs on doom-laden news bulletins and an alarming childhood trauma that sets the tone for Edwards’ set, Sentimental is ultimately sentimental about the innate goodness of British people, even though the country is a bit so-so. And while this critical appraisal may appear in a future performance, Edwards is at least clear that giving half stars won’t get you on the poster (which has in no way influenced this review!).

Reviewed on  27 September 2025

The Reviews Hub Star Rating:

80%

Enough stars for the poster