Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

With his booming, bombastic delivery and aggressive friendliness, John Robertson conveys a real force-of-nature energy, so it makes sense that he's now styling himself as The Human Hurricane.

He rips around his sizeable room for extended bouts of audience interaction. It's a big space and he suffers from occasionally being miles away from your vantage point, so you can't always see the object of his loud but affectionate derision.

That's no great matter, though, as the Australian's sheer volume precludes the need for a microphone, and he's in perpetual motion, simply moving onto another target if the conversation or his inspiration threatens to dry up. There's an intimidating aspect to it, sure, and all but the bravest dip their eyes when he ventures into their vicinity.

Yet if he characterises his crowd as losers and perverts, freaks and deviants, well it's a group the black-clad comic is delighted to lead, strutting about and looming above them like David Bowie's Goblin King in Labyrinth.

Evidence of sub-cultures on T-shirts and physical similarities to fictional characters delight him. And he establishes running, criss-crossing relationships and narratives that he keeps returning to even as he shifts from improvisation into his prep-prepared poems and punk tunes on the ukulele. 

The first of these, his title track, establishes a barely necessary self-diagnosis of neurodivergence, which recurs on and off, most notably in his twisted appeal to a Small Autistic Woman and an admission of monetising his ADHD. The songs are predominantly one-gag, three-chord bursts of furious intensity that he uses as the launchpad for more hectic crowd work.

Still, Robertson is venting some anger, with Anime Cunt, a blunt attack on the darker, more misogynistic aspects of that animated genre. And the excellent Shut Up You Tiny Fool is an extended, patronising call for the likes of Elon Musk, JK Rowling and wannabe school shooters to take a break from speaking their brains on social media. Garnering a sing-along, he fills it out with genuine nuggets of demented wisdom culled from keyboard warriors and vainglorious lunatics, the sort of monsters he's a woke-angled caricature of.

Elsewhere, though, he's just silly for silly's sake. Kitty Kat Blues is a winningly daft test of the audience's indulgence. And despite the sincere verse with which he ends, the abiding impression of the hour is that it's been intense but throwaway. A few points of view have been bracingly expressed, but for the most part, Robertson is content to rely on his considerable stage command and crowd work skills.

You yearn for a bit more ambition, something to get your teeth into beyond mere morsels, while admiring the atmosphere he creates and how much this veins-bulging, eye-popping spoof of a cult leader accomplishes with so relatively little of substance.

Review date: 19 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Laughing Horse @ The Counting House