Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Edinburgh knows Rob Kemp for his cult hit The Elvis Dead. But now he’s gone from looking like The King to looking like a queen, in a beautiful, sparkly, full-length gown, generously slit up one leg.

He’s aware this glamour jars with the grubby nightclub he’s performing in, but enjoys the juxtaposition. It works as he portrays himself as a down-to-earth heterosexual bloke from the Midlands who knows his way around a B&Q – and has the unpretentious sense of humour to match. It’s just that he likes to wear dresses, too.

He uses the phrase transvestite, but with a certain distaste, as it suggests clothes have an inherent gender when it’s really just a convention of fashion. Why does he get a label, he asks, when women who wear trousers don’t?

Agender is about his personal experiences of not conforming to gender norms, from his discomfort about the Lumberjack Song from his Monty Python heroes to the response of those closest to him when he came out to them. 

It’s only relatively recently he’s felt able to do this, so stories are tinged with a sadness that he hasn’t been allowed to be true to himself for so long. And that not every reaction has been the unconditional love, acceptance – or even affectionate piss-taking – that you would hope. Such segments are necessarily contemplative, even a little bleak, but he soon picks the mood up again with a joke, for not taking things too seriously – or at least pretending to – is his default setting.

Despite the show being drawn from first-hand experience, talking about such a topic can’t help touch on more significant issues, so there’s plenty of food for thought to chew on as he asks questions like what’s the deal with stags in drag? What are their male friends subconsciously saying? 

The hour is bookended by a message a friend sent him when her son expressed a desire to wear a frock to school that ultimately carries optimistic signs that society’s moving in the right direction, even if the path is sometimes bumpy.

Yet for all the big questions and soul-baring, Kemp keeps the show sprightly and light. He’ll let things get a little deep, but only for a moment before countering it with the sort of no-nonsense humour that would work in a club set, not just at the artsy Fringe. 

And it wouldn’t be a Rob Kemp show if it didn’t come with a hefty dose of pop culture references – in this case, Big Trouble In Little China. Apt, as Agenda kicks ass, too.

• Rob Kemp: Agenda is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy at The Hive at 7.35pm

Review date: 15 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive)