Review by Hilary Wardle

There comes a point during every Edinburgh Fringe when you’re standing on stage having your hair brushed by a trembling, feverish-looking man wearing black latex rubber gloves and you suddenly think: am I enjoying myself?

Unfortunately, sometimes the answer is ‘not quite enough’.

There’s no denying that Jacob Edwards is a talented comedian who is extremely good at pretending to be very, very bad indeed. Faux Latino Show Pony sees him taking on the role of three completely different, imaginary and entirely awful stand-up comedians while also pushing the boundaries of good taste (and appropriate forms of audience participation) at every possible opportunity.

There’s the sleazy, sub-Gervais sniggering prankster archetype who laughs offstage for several minutes before appearing with a well-shaken bottle of fizzy water, repeatedly threatening to unscrew the cap in people’s faces. Then there’s the sweaty-palmed Roger Showbusiness, a man with such bad stage fright that he spends most of his set stifling a sob…not to mention luring innocent reviewers on stage and singing R Kelly to them while pulling a small child’s underwear out of his pocket. He’s like a walking Viz comic.

Then there’s the suave, uber-confident Remy Martin. Martin is probably the strongest of Edwards’ creations and the sequence where he drags audience members on stage to participate in a man auction is very funny… unless, of course, you’re the men who he dragged up on stage to be his competitors and forced to parade up and down while looking increasingly embarrassed and uncomfortable.

The concept of pretending to be a series of thoroughly shit comedians is a great one, but it asks a huge amount of his audience. In fact, the whole show calls to mind the character comedy of Marc Wootton, star of the cringe-inducing My New Best Friend. In case it passed you by, MNBF was an innovative 2003 game show where members of the public were told they’d win £10k they successfully managed to convince their friends and family that Marc was a long lost close friend. Unfortunately for them, that ‘close friend’ then turned out to be an utter lunatic who did their level best to embarrass them, wind them up, exhaust them and alienate their nearest and dearest.

That programme was great because a) Wootton, like Edwards, is an expert at staying in character and b) you weren’t there, so you could chuckle away at his victim’s misfortune from the comfort of your sofa. Also, the contestant won ten grand if they managed to cope with the character Wootton had conjured up, while Jacob Edward’s audience have to pay for the privilege.

At times it all got so claustrophobic and strange that you couldn’t help but wonder whether the entire gig was being secretly filmed for an E4 prank show. Jacob Edwards is very creative and certainly one to watch, but unless you’re immune to bum-clenching awkwardness it might be best to do it from a polite distance.

Review date: 6 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Hilary Wardle