Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Josh Glanc gives free rein to his most playful impulses in this charming, deeply silly new grab bag of ideas that never adds up to much and is all the better for it.

In previous outings, I’ve seen him attempt to inject emotional stakes and coups de theatre, but both aspirations are now left in the dirt where they belong. Here, he’s created a feelgood smashing-together of goofball tricks that he offers up like a big tent preacher, an energy that suffuses his work even when he’s not consciously evoking it via electric organ music, a weird accent, and themed sketches. Like when he gets the (self-identified) sluttiest members of the audience to transfer their slutty energy into him until he starts speaking in tongues.

Much of the show is soundtracked in one form or another, whether through big sunny pop standards or the repeated motifs of the original numbers. He’s written a nice series of tunes detailing the ridiculous ways he might have met his wife, and there’s the title song Family Man, which returns in many different forms without ever making much sense or building to anything in particular. He ‘accidentally’ wraps up and then restarts the show a number of times, apologising for being too much in the zone.

Charmingly, he seems to have very much found his audience recently. ‘Are there any silly billies in?’ he shouts, and the response is resounding. His loveable big bear energy is reflected back to him in spades. 

Despite the mania and the feeling that anything might happen, he’s a very non-threatening presence on stage, and there’s very little of the usual reluctance that usually greets attempts at audience participation. Instead, people willingly offer themselves up, to the extent that at one point it seemed as if two punters were about to fall in love on stage, such is the convivial atmosphere Glanc is able to create. 

It feels like there are a lot of shows like this at the Fringe this year, just collections of silly ideas that consciously reject deeper themes and meanings, and I think it’s to be welcomed. Glanc has found something good here.

Review date: 21 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club