Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

‘I had my first epilepsy attack during National Epilepsy Week,’ Jake Lambert tells us. ‘Which was fitting.’

Yes, this is a show about the comic’s condition, and in particular, the fellow sufferer who came to his aid when he had an episode in a busy store, becoming his mentor in the transitional – OK, ‘liminal’ – period as he learned how to live with it.

It’s a gag-filled account, with Lambert frequently the butt of his own jokes over how ineptly he dealt with this new normal. An episode in a university lecture hall is particularly hilarious, thanks to the gulf between what he thought had happened and what actually did.

Winningly self-deprecating, the winsome young comic is a joke machine, and the hour is laden with great punchlines – and maybe one or two groaners, too, as if he can’t help himself.

The hour gets off to a cracking start with a tight routine contrasting the friendliness of a US baseball game he attended to the threatening tribal menace of a British football match. This story feels like preamble but reappears later with a new perspective.

In between, there’s something of an indie romcom vibe to his friendship with the German exchange student who came to his aid and his subsequent attempt to reconnect with her long after she had returned home, even if the relationship was platonic. 

He takes entertaining diversions into topics such as social media, ego-boosting trips to gay bars, and a missed chance of delivering the perfect line to José Mourinho while he was working at Legoland. Lambert that is, not Mourinho.

But primarily, Liminal is an insight into what it was like to live with his type of epilepsy that is typically brought on by stress and alcohol – especially as a beta male already socially uncertain.

That trait meant he had mixed results when he had to contend with a strange energy at this particular performance. Half the audience comprised one huge group of teenage girls, the giggly cast of a Fringe theatre show who answered Lambert’s questions in unison with a Children Of The Corn creepiness. His flow was also disrupted by latecomers and a woman who boldly walked across the front of the stage to take a toilet break. 

Lambert often regretted going into the audience, as it always robbed his show of momentum, but the clumsy interactions added spontaneity and an extra layer of on-brand awkwardness, even if that wasn’t what he was aiming for.

But look beyond that and the underlying show was robust enough to withstand these disruptions: smartly constructed, bursting with punchlines and told with a smiley good nature that has you always rooting for him, in the room as well as in his hugely entertaining stories.

• Jake Lambert: Liminal is on at Pleasance Courtyard at 7.05pm

Review date: 23 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard