Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Sometimes it can feel as if the Edinburgh Fringe exists only as a forum for comedians to share their woes. So it’s a rarity for Sam Lake to come out as confident and happy, content in his marriage and his own skin. No ‘troubled artist’ vibe here: the biggest burden he has to bear is that he suffers from motion sickness.

It’s a state of affairs he ascribes to his Spanish mother’s parenting, helping transform him from the shy, awkward, bullied schoolboy to the man he is today.  Esmeralda – not actually her name – is a tribute to that, as well as a memorial to her life, as she died 16 years ago, when Lake was 18.

On that, job done. This, Lake's second Edinburgh show, achieves his aim of affectionately introducing her to his audiences, keeping that memory alive.

Surrounding that, however, is relatively workmanlike stand-up loosely pegged to childhood memories. Leisurely-paced observations on the likes of Penelope Cruz airline adverts and reality TV programmes are high on Lake expressing a WTF? incredulity, lower on solid punchlines. 

This reaches a low with a needlessly long-winded recollection of his nominally Catholic mother telling Lake she was probably atheist and he should make up his own mind about religion before detouring into an inadequately explained routine about a tree that smells of cum, none of which really has a punchline.

It’s a shame the pickings are patchy, as Lake has a lot going for him as a stand-up. His air of cheeriness readily induces the same in his audience, and he has an understated suburban sass, epitomised by his icebreaking stories of slaying among all the mums at the Zumba class at his local community hall.

He has some decent running standalone jokes – the best being his imagined subtitles for all the Ice Age movie sequels – while occasionally alighting on bigger-picture stuff, such as the  routine about sex education making a strong point about how its overwhelmingly heterosexual focus did not make Lake feel good about his orientation.

But it’s hard to make a show about contentment really hit home, and Lake ends up instilling that same sense in the audience, despite not having too many quotable gags and memorable routines.

Review date: 4 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club