Brighton Fringe comedy review

It’s billed as three stand-ups offering comedy coming from the ‘very depths of their damned souls’, which provides plenty of latitude for he most depraved material.

But while Ben Adams, Shaun Edwards and Louie Lee had an on-off flirtation with gags of dubious taste, by far the darkest line came from quoting the gruesome lyrics of thrash metal band Flayed Disciple. Music beats comedy on the depravity front.

That detail came courtesy of Edwards – proudly sporting his Metallica T-shirt as he shared amusing stories from the moshpits of his subculture. Away from that pet topic he’s on shakier ground, such as the section on having a posh accent. It might work from the mouth of Jack Whitehall, but Edwards’ brogue is fairly nondescript, upper-class only by the standards of his rough school, so it doesn’t quite ring true.

His other contribution to the dark comedy theme was a chunk about Princess Diana’s death, hitting the same tropes about the Queen being behind it and Harry’s parentage that were old-hat soon after the 1997 crash, let alone 26 years later. Still, it allows him to crack out his Elton John specs and do a lyric-swap song parody. 

For his part, Lee mistook ‘dark’ for ‘crude’, and there was little artistry to the lines. But more crucially he has an identity crisis: these jokes don’t sound right coming from a clean-cut and surprising youthful looking 35-year-old and nor does he play up the incongruity.

The sex gags are of the blunt ‘taking it up the arse’ kind as he talks about being bisexual. Or just cheesy as his flirtation with pansexuality meant ‘I was kicked out of John Lewis…’

He has some more interesting material about being a news cameraman, and the odd topical joke, while his experiences in war zones have instilled a promising gallows humour, but we see too little of that.

Lee’s clearly enjoying himself, laughing generously at his own jokes, but he just hasn’t got a consistent voice or persona to define him. 

Adams is a much sillier, rambunctious presence – which made him well-suited to compering the hour before his own closing set. 

He’s gleefully immature – and his contribution the dark theme was a more schoolboyish revelling in the stupidly immature. Similarly befitting his personality, he sees no shame in doing cheesy gags such as ‘I lost my grandad recently… but we found him’, relying on his ebullience to sell the lines. Which it does.

• Black Sheep Comedy is  back at the Caxton Arms at 10.30pm on Friday and Saturday and 9.30pm on Sunday.

Review date: 30 May 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Caxton Arms