Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Flying very much under the radar this year with no publicity and very little press coverage, Rob Copland’s new show is a sparkling hidden gem of an hour, anchored by an absurdly committed comic performance.

The number of comics getting diagnosed with ADHD has become a bit of a running joke, but you’ve never seen anyone embody the struggle like Copland, who swears blind that you can catch it off him by looking into his eyes. He styles himself like Mike Wozniak but moves around the stage like flubber, pinging off every surface at incredible speed and drowning the audience in a barrage of jokes, seemingly not caring if you’ve finished laughing at the last one before bunting out the next. The entire time, he’s making faces, striking poses and doing tricks with the mic – a turbo-charged showman.

The result is initially uncomplicated joy. ‘MWAH,’ he kisses the microphone, ‘MWAH,’ he kisses a bald man’s head. ‘You’ve gotta MWAH your way through life!’ he shouts.

But something very existential is creeping into this set, first shown in a brilliant routine where he searches frantically for something without a name or definition. ‘What is it?! Where is it?! How do I access it?! That’s not quite it!’ It’s a minute-long cri de coeur that so perfectly captures something universal with brain-splitting directness. The audience are simultaneously hysterical, entranced and concerned for his safety.

‘What’s the show about?’ he asks himself, then starts crying and screaming. If I had to guess, I’d say it represents a searing desire to be part of something, to put your arms around something, but to not know what that something is.

In real life, Copland holds down a menial job in a bakery, which is a bit like dropping an Animaniac into an accountancy firm. The resulting pressure in his brain is then blasted out of the sluice pipe of nonsense that is this show.

You can feel him so keenly not wanting to go back to the day job, and it lends his performance a wildness and desperation that you just don’t see halfway through a Fringe run. He mentions at the end that he’s on a lot of cold and flu medication as well, so maybe the fact that he’s performing as though his life depended on it is a function of being sick, like Michael Jordan’s famous flu game.

Although the energy levels are very different, the way that Copland is constantly in danger of being overwhelmed by existentialism reminds me of Jordan Brookes, but while Brookes’ narrow window only admits nihilistic and upsetting thoughts, Copland advocates flushing your ADHD medication and experiencing all the joy and terror that life has to offer, particularly in an incredibly funny ode to the perfection of the exclamation mark.

And then, no spoilers here, but the final ten minutes of this show take it to another level, bringing the audience inside the creativity and playfulness that have been exploding from the stage for the whole hour.

Instead of getting serious, and instead of getting wordy, Copland has found the perfect method to show us (without telling) exactly what he’s been getting at in this glorious show about everything and nothing. On this night, at least, the standing ovation was immediate.

Review date: 18 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: PBH's Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth