Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Thirty years old, still renting, and having already packed away 10 years of Fringe shows, Alexander Bennett’s age is starting to reflect his stage presence: a working-class boy with the dry, arch wit of a bard and a slight redolence of Games Workshop.

After some very funny experiences of renting in the London property market, Bennett found himself splitting with his long-term partner and living alone for the first time, quickly coming to the conclusion that, faced with his own company, he just doesn’t like himself. It’s that premise that guides this hour of no-frills self-loathing.

Locating the cause of this feeling is the first step to improvement, and Bennett has narrowed it down to four facets of his self-worth: body/appearance; innate sense of being a bad person; things he’s done in the past; things he hasn’t yet managed to do.

Given this comprehensively negative self-assessment, it’s to Bennett’s great credit that his hour is at all times fun, funny, tremendously engaging and even frequently joyous.

He would put that down to ‘performative confidence’ rather than what he desires: the real-world confidence of people who eat food in the supermarket before paying.

But that performative confidence is well-founded: he holds the audience in the palm of his hand, easily overcoming the static atmosphere of the room and pulling big laughs from every quadrant with a barrage of well-chosen similes and misanthropic truisms.

Despite being a seasoned and skilful veteran at this age, you can see why his act doesn’t get the attention it should do. In a crowded marketplace, he doesn’t have a defined hook to his persona, and seems destined to remain an under-the-radar proposition.

But his act presents a compelling argument to look past the obvious. At one point, talking about being a man attracted to all types of women, he offers perhaps the only genuinely fresh perspective I’ve heard from a stand-up this entire year, and an angle that begs for further exploration. You hope he’ll give himself room to do that work and make a definitive statement in future shows.

Review date: 9 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House