Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Acts like Mike Rice don’t always get a lot of critical traction at the Fringe. 

Born in Kilkenny, the son of a farmer, he has no interest in conceits, gimmicks or tech. He doesn’t use stage lights, and when the microphone briefly stops working it becomes clear that he doesn’t need that either, being more than happy and certainly capable of bellowing to the back of the room. 

All he really wants to do is talk about shagging, call his audience paedos and make people belly laugh. Happiest in the muck, his secret is that he’s a phenomenal wordsmith and world-class raconteur.

‘You seem like a devious little man,’ he tells someone in the front row, based on no evidence whatsoever, ‘I’m a rotten little divvil myself.’ 

His contention is that nasty Irish men are having an Indian summer ever since Barry Keoghan fucked that grave in Saltburn.  I’m not sure that’s necessarily borne out elsewhere at the Fringe, but god, in such a politically and emotionally sensitive festival it feels so good to get the troglodyte point of view.

He describes his childhood fantastically, raised by a ‘miserable lunatic’ of a father and taking family vacations to Wexford, 45 minutes away, where he might cop a feel of a headless body that’s washed up on the rain-battered beach. 

As an aside, he indicates there were probably ramifications to growing up in this way, but again we must stress, this is not that kind of show. You might even wonder what the point of being vulnerable is, when Rice makes it look so easy to hold the room by the throat. 

Moving into the second half, unnecessarily huge pot shots are taken at the Dalai Lama, the peanut head of Andrew Tate, and Beyonce, ‘one of the slipperiest crooks on planet Earth.’  I love how much he loves to batter his audience. Before the hour is up, everyone in the pub has been called devious, a big eejit or a paedophile at best.

You might well read the above and feel like Nazis, paedophiles and shouting is not your cup of tea, and I would normally agree, but if you think you have any taste for earth and fire, go see Mike Rice. This is dirty, hysterical club comedy at its pinnacle.

Review date: 17 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Scottish Comedy Festival @ The Beehive Inn