Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Jody Kamali is clearly genuinely chuffed to have sold out one of the biggest venues in this unusual festival after 15 years of tiny rooms and soul-sapping Royal Mile flyering.

His inventive, extended final scene shows himself worthy of such a space, though it comes only after much more pedestrian character work from his back catalogue. His personas still feel two-dimensional, despite all the years he’s put into them.

He starts with 1980s Fray Bentos darts champion Mark ‘Dazzling’ Daly, with a proud mullet and Burt Reynolds moustache. He’s an old-school ‘real man’ – for which read a reactionary, sexist divorcé. He feels like a watered-down version of an Adam Riches character, though Kamali is more sympathetic to the sad-sack behind the poseur. 

The chat is no more than workmanlike, with audience interaction in these Covid times is reduced to the sluggish mechanism of him giving the audience questions to ask back at him. More fruitful are his entry routines performed with faux intensity, though only half the room get on board.

Next, Kamali becomes the compere, an unplaceable European called Fernando in a vermillion crushed velvet dinner jacket. He gets us to sing ‘prick’ a lot, which he insists is Russian for ‘jump’ – not exactly sophisticated, but designed to loosen up the crowd. 

Then there’s The Man in Black, the Las Vegas man of mystery who juggles with plastic bags in the same way that Norman Lovett does, but with a magician’s look of earnestness. Again the joke is the serious intent behind his movements, but it feels a bit like the same joke as with his darts champ.

Viktor, Kamali’s blood-sucking vampire, uses his physicality to better purpose, effectively recreating the gurning melodrama of a 1920s black-and-white B-movie.

But it’s the finale that saves the show, an elaborate, creative mime worthy of Tape Face in which he converts an ironing board into the object of his desire, then charts the full course of their relationship.

This is a triumph – variously joyous, sad and dramatic – and showing that Kamali’s talents extend far beyond the more forgettable characters that precede it.

• Jody Kamali and Friends is at Assembly Roxy at 7.45pm tonight.

Review date: 22 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett