Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Lord Christian Brighty makes Lord Byron look like an incel. The oversexed lothario is shagging his way around Regency Britain – but can he keep it in his breeches long enough to secure true love?

This loose and silly parody of every bodice-ripping heartthrob from Poldark to Darcy to the bloke in Bridgerton is tremendous fun. Brighty can’t hide his playful delight in the vanity and shameless promiscuity of his over-the-top alter-ego in a century before political correctness had been invented.  

And his epic period drama is brought to life on a Fringe budget, with charmingly cheap but inventive props, and creative workarounds to add more characters to the more-or-less one-man show. And Brighty, always with an impish glint in his eye, leans into the slight chaos all this causes, occasionally calling on punters to help him out.

His foppish character has a flirtatious banter with the audience from the moment he stumbles into the venue, hoping for a brief respite from the orgy outside. Luckily he finds us all absolute munters, so his ardour is calmed – at least until he is hit by Cupid’s arrows.

His true love, though, is a duchess – but her father would never countenance a union with such a reckless libertine, so our hero must mend his ways to win him and her over. Maybe a glorious wartime record would help – so allow your swashes to be buckled as he takes on Napoleon’s fleet using a very unusual military tactic – or maybe he needs a hilariously oversized chastity belt to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Visual gags are matched with some daft verbal ones, from overblown boastful rhetoric in the vein of Rick Mayall’s Lord Flashheart to a smattering of enjoyable malapropisms.

However, just over halfway through, something that would never happen to our lascivious Casanova himself occurs – and the show begins to flag. The visuals and boastful dialogue remain as ridiculous as the character’s entire being, but they are different variations on the same idea – and that starts to show.

But even if this randy dandy can’t quite sustain a full hour single-handed, he is still a fine comic creation offering many moments of joyous stupidity. He’ll seduce the audience figuratively as well as literally.

• Christian Brighty: Playboy is on at the Pleasance Courtyard at 9.40pm

Review date: 12 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard