Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

For anyone stressed by the sensory overload of Edinburgh at festival time, William Stone aims to have the most relaxing show on the Fringe. And with his gentle but inventive jokes, softly told, he might just have taken that title.

He performs for 45 minutes and at a languid pace - there’s even a mini-interval (bring your own Capri-Sun) in the unlikely event things get too intense. Russell Kane would burn through this material in five minutes.

But as the ASMR of comedy, Stone is in no rush. He sometimes strums his guitar soporifically behind his gags to further soften the mood and slow the pace even more, forcing bigger pauses before the payoffs, which the tension helps amplify.

The lulling delivery makes only the slightest distinction between feedline and punchline, and all gags are performed equal, whether it’s an exquisite nugget of original thought or a more formulaic pull-back-and-reveal. Stone has plenty of the former, which you may vow to try to remember, but probably won’t, at least not until they make an appearance on ‘jokes of the Fringe’ round-ups, as they surely will. They are the pithy, clean, witty gags newspapers will love.

Some of his material is gently self-effacing stuff about not being in shape or lacking a girlfriend, enough to build general beta-male vibe, but not so much as to be a theme. But everything about the persona is rooted in the mundane: he describes his home as ‘near the big Tesco’ and sets gags at such glitzy locations as the Stafford Travelodge.

The occasional amusing cartoon on the screen is close as he gets to pizzazz, otherwise just lets the jokes speak - or rather whisper - for themselves. And they’re (mostly) good enough to stand on their own in that way.

Review date: 17 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard