This Wednesday, The Student sat down at the Pleasance to enjoy Larry Dean’s new comedy hour and bore witness to an hour of heart-warmingly lewd jokes. Nowhere else at this Fringe has the outrageous and romantic been balanced so well.
The hour predominantly follows Dean’s journey to proposing to his now husband, and the experience of falling in love after heartbreak. Interweaved is astute cultural commentary pointing out what you don’t know you already know about other people, alongside a half dozen accents touring England and Scotland. The accents seem to be a symptom of Dean’s interest in the lives of other people and what they’re thinking, and in his hour he gives a look-in as to what he’s figured out so far.
An unfortunately rare find on Fringe’s bigger stages is local humour and reference. Dean gifts exactly that when calling Edinburgh a “cage to keep tourists safe” and can comfortably claim to be the only Fringe comic to have proposed outside The Hive (a hugely romantic site in the heart of Edinburgh’s old town).
Dean’s writing is concise and gliding, smoothly segueing between airport security (why are our accents so much stronger in the mornings?), how Catholics eyes are always far apart, and what it takes to cry from joy. Yet even with such a broad range of topics, its core remains the same with a keen interest in perspective and humility. Yet, I should say, not to be confused for an hour of warming tales of human nature but rather a poking, anthropological stream of consciousness. The hour has a refreshing self-knowledge that leads the audience for its full duration, only brewing further excitement for whatever it is to come next.
Larry Dean: Hellbent is running until 30 August (not 16) at Beyond at Pleasance Courtyard.
Buy tickets here.
Image by Matt Crockett provided to The Student for press use.
