Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The debut show from New York-based comedian Alexis Gay makes some unlikely lemonade from the comedic lemons of getting severe burnout in a soul-destroying tech sales job. 

An unusual type A personality in a creative industry, Gay has only  recently deviated from the path laid out for her by her parents’ expectations and the demands of a ‘good CV’. Raised with what she describes as a ‘middle-management parenting’ style, she remembers being six years old and getting paid $100 by her father to make a PowerPoint deck on stoicism. 

She’s wise to clearly establish her character as a recovering perfectionist early on, because Unprofessional is a show that relies more on storytelling than it does on jokes. The image of herself that she builds in our minds as a naïve and industrious worker bee has little intrinsic humour but she’s a sharp enough writer to throw in some good lines on a regular basis and keep it engaging. 

At the beginning of a promising career and (she hints) trying to win the approval of her father, Gay is scouted by a hot new tech company and taken to San Francisco, but quickly discovers that, rather than the advertised business development role, she’s ended up in an awful phone sales job surrounded by Patrick Bateman wannabes.

Her story happens everywhere in the West. Gold star student is hooked up to the prestige drip of a fancy tech company and exploited relentlessly until their hair falls out, their health collapses and they have to disconnect or die. Gay is relatively even-handed about her time at the unnamed tech giant, telling us that her experience is not at all unusual, and even admitting that the tactics she was subjected to – brutal hours, fierce artificial competition, deliberately disorienting management – are ‘effective at building a high-performance sales team.’ 

There’s still something quite funny about listening to this arty Fringe crowd of performers and creative types literally gasp in horror as she relates some fairly standard corporate practices.

Likeable, and with a polished sense of storytelling, she doesn’t quite manage to spin gold from straw, but it’s an entertaining and – ironically/appropriately – professional hour set in a world that’s rarely covered in stand-up.

Review date: 23 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Underbelly George Square