Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Ukrainian comedian Dima Watermelon likens my presence to review his show in the dying days of the Fringe to Britain’s military aid to his homeland – appreciated, but far too late to make any material difference. It’s a solid joke in a show that doesn’t always distil complex subject matter into a punchline quite so succinctly.

Of course, everyone wants – and expects – him to talk about the war and its consequences. But do they really, though? It’s a tough subject to make funny and Watermelon’s description of the night Russia invaded is heart-wrenching.

He was living in Berlin at the time, as he still does, his base for an internationally nomadic lifestyle as he pursues what he admits might be an unwise dream to become a stand-up performing in English. His ‘warrior’ of a mum certainly has her doubts about his career hopes, which she doesn’t hold back in expressing. If she sees the modest audience he’s pulling in Edinburgh, those fears could be realised.

There’s quite a lot of material here about being a stand-up, including a sluggish ‘story’ of him not being able to get an invoice out of one club he performed at for his tax records, which really is as gripping as it sounds.  He was grasping for a point about corruption – rife in Ukraine but at least a level playing field if everyone’s at it, he reasons – but it was awkwardly made, not helped by his relatively deadpan delivery.

On the conflict, he has a few mild observations about refugees and those who over-keen to take them in, plus some far-from mild historical context about the multi-generational trauma inflicted upon his beleaguered  nation, from world wars, the Holodomor, Soviet rule and subsequent oligarchy. 

Away from such misery, Watermelon (an inappropriately jaunty surname given the topics, but it’s his real one, translated into Engish) has a long anecdote about the notorious Piss Goblin who sits in the urinals of Berlin’s Berghain nightclub. Other comics have spoken about him before – obviously – but Watermelon has some fun with the dilemma of whether to indulge the man’s kink or not.

More pedestrian are  jokey suggestions for the EU to impose regulations on greetings, as he gets overwhelmed by the options on hugging, while a bit on online dating gets tangled in extraneous details of how Tinder’s premium service works. 

His final joke, he tells us, will be dark – and this after the Piss Goblin story – so sets out the road map of how it will unfold, which unfortunately sets up expectations of something epic that the gag cannot match.

Amid all this, somewhere, is a narrative about how in this messed-up world he can surely be a comic if he wants, but he can’t tease it out very cleanly.  Watermelon will never be the best-known comedian to come out of Ukraine – given that was how Volodymyr Zelenskyy started – but he has some interesting ideas, even if he doesn't have the focus to make them sing.

Review date: 26 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Laughing Horse @ The Raging Bull