\u2018If there\u2019s one thing this show doesn\u2019t do, it\u2019s come to you,\u201d says Ed Night. That\u2019s part of the charm \u2013 and possibly a slight failing \u2013 in the south London standup\u2019s new set. As he treads around in a circle on his small stage, Your Old Mucker unfolds at its own laconic pace, and leaves us to make meaning out of its disparate parts. The 29-year-old\u2019s authority, his sly standoffishness and playfulness with the art form are qualities of a standup near the top of his game \u2013 albeit one who with this ambling, endearing show doesn\u2019t get quite as much out of them as he might.<\/p>\n
The conceit here is that Night\u2019s writing process is, in fact, a walking one. The show traces his perambulations around his local neighbourhood, from the dentist to the butcher, from Nisa Local to the betting shop, connecting with friends and local characters along the way. Dotted throughout are references to his late grandad, whose eccentricities (a penchant for filling biscuit tins with not-biscuits; a circumcision in his 80s) are to grandson Ed a wonder and inspiration.<\/p>\n
As for how these strands connect \u2013 well, I\u2019d have liked the show to \u201ccome to me\u201d just a little bit more in that regard. Given Night\u2019s present-day story is prominently a tale of penniless, fragile young adulthood, dodging bills and drinking cheap coffee in chicken shops, maybe the parallel with his wartime forebear is there purely for bathos? Not that there\u2019s anything heroic about grandad, if the audio clips of his left-field second world war memories (or lack thereof) are anything to go by.<\/p>\n
But if Your Old Mucker unfolds obliquely, it is studded with original thinking, great phrasemaking and big-hitting jokes \u2013 of which the guide-dog gags, a vision of Fortnum & Mason as Dante\u2019s hell and a routine on bargaining with his landlord for a lower rent are standouts. With a couple of later riffs (one on the Buddha; one on Steve Irwin) seemingly winched in from different shows entirely, the show may not hang together that tightly. But walking a mile in Night\u2019s shoes is still, in this Edinburgh comedy award-nominated<\/a> show, a wander well worth taking.<\/p>\n At Monkey Barrel, the Hive, Edinburgh<\/a>, until 24 August
All our Edinburgh festival reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018If there\u2019s one thing this show doesn\u2019t do, it\u2019s come to you,\u201d says Ed Night. That\u2019s part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-365532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115074371725357796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}