Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Determined to be both an iconoclast and a man of the people, Tom Ward appears doomed to failure – but has a bloody good go at reconciling these seemingly incompatible aims.

Some lively elements in the crowd on the night I saw him checked his momentum and put this ambition under particular strain. As security escorted one drunk disrupter on to the cobbles outside, Ward took the opportunity to get a pop in at his former Fringe home of The Pleasance and its treatment of Jerry Sadowitz, a little embarrassed at having temporarily aligned with The Man.

As a natural contrarian, he's not surfing the fashionable wave in comedy of talking about bisexual relationships – as he did on his Live at the Apollo appearance – having settled as a straight man.

Currently in a relationship with another comedian, he could cope with her cheating on him with Michael McIntyre, not out of malice towards the bigger name comic, but to witness the spectacle of the primetime, shiny floor titan challenging his audience with divorce and breakdown material. 

Several other comics have a McIntyre impression in their repertoire, yet Ward's take is mischievously distinctive, borne less out of jealousy or even grudging admiration than the delight of smashing discordant notes together.

Ward is also interested in where heartfelt, artistic innovation becomes the ploddingly familiar sounds of the mainstream. He shares a big, anthemic refrain that Coldplay and Kings of Leon rode hard around stadiums, having first nicked it from Radiohead, and staunchly claims an unfashionable appreciation of Bono.

Clever music metaphors abound in his routines and he leans hard on pop culture touchstones while subverting and repackaging them. Aspiring to a communal atmosphere, the cartoonish extremes of poverty in his opening song about living in a house-share are possibly only relatable if you're a starving artist just about surviving in London. But the witty wordplay, catchy call-and-response tune and nods to Bon Jovi and Queen get everyone on board.

The growth in representation of gay people in adverts and the needless consternation this causes some in the Boomer generation is well-argued. But it begets some surprisingly standard observations on the barely subliminal, sexualised aspects of all advertising and the mixed messaging inherent in gambling ads. Ward's enjoyably gravelly Ray Winstone growl and allusions to the mental gymnastics that the gambling addict must undertake are not enough to elevate it.

That's a rare flat sequence, though, as elsewhere Ward takes the oldest cliches of the people's game, as featured in countless post-match analyses, mixes in a dash of modern, technology-enabled football parlance and contrives a tour-de-force commentary on his under-appreciated bedroom technique. And he really gets stuck into the issues of male and female consent in a post-MeToo world, asking the awkward questions about how respect in the daytime converts into erotic abandon in the evening.

A gameshow bit about people competing in one-upmanship regarding their mental health problems is similarly zeitgeisty but less successful, characteristic of a show that soars when Ward is in full flow but every now and then really stutters, his closing, a cappella rendition of Cher's Believe feeling tacked on rather than triumphantly earned.

• Tom Ward: Anthem is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy at 10:25pm

Review date: 17 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club