{"id":369773,"date":"2025-08-24T13:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T13:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369773\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T13:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T13:05:13","slug":"sam-jay-we-the-people-review-a-cool-diagnosis-of-americas-ills-edinburgh-festival-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369773\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Jay: We the People review \u2013 a cool diagnosis of America\u2019s ills | Edinburgh festival 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

In We the People, Sam Jay<\/a> talks politics and culture rather than talking about herself \u2013 and it\u2019s a sign of the standup times, perhaps, that that feels transgressive. The show, nominated for an Edinburgh comedy award<\/a>, takes the temperature of a divided America, and \u2013 even less fashionable, this \u2013 proposes how it might be healed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a perfect set: Jay has a diffident manner at the microphone, so there are punchlines that aren\u2019t audible, far less impactful. But the range, ambition \u2013 and sometimes quality \u2013 of her thinking makes something distinctive, certainly at this year\u2019s fringe, of this cool diagnosis of America\u2019s ills.<\/p>\n

A marker of Jay\u2019s intention to do things differently is put down early with a routine questioning \u201cnon-binary\u201d as a gender category. Are we in the realms of Dave Chappelle<\/a>-alike transphobic comedy? We are not. But looking at her country, Jay \u2013 herself black and gay \u2013 argues that the pace of change is alienating potential sympathisers, that people need to step out of their silos and meet halfway, that culture wars are \u201cpeople fighting for what they understand\u201d. She goes to a rodeo, and apprehends the gulf between red-state America and her world of veganism and trans bathrooms. She brings Jeffrey Dahmer in from the cold. She interrogates black people\u2019s culpability for the state of her nation. (\u201cWe celebrated OJ too hard.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Sometimes, these are useful as well as funny ideas. Sometimes, they\u2019re arresting but glib \u2013 as with her argument for a return to a state of nature, or the arrogance v insecurity she identifies in colonialism v chattel slavery. But how thrilling to be, as that reference implies, at a show bandying big concepts around. And making them so provocatively funny, as with Jay\u2019s extended riff on \u201cfucked farmers\u201d and alien abduction, or her visit to the UK to encounter whiteness at its zenith.<\/p>\n

The pleasure, at the performance I saw, was undermined by a bewilderingly abrupt ending. But We the People remains an eye-catching set from a comic who\u2019s found lots to say, and lots to laugh about, in the not-ostensibly-amusing condition of modern America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In We the People, Sam Jay talks politics and culture rather than talking about herself \u2013 and it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-369773","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\/115083891585953330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369773","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=369773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}