TRAUMA’S TRENDY in comedy right now!” says Jonny Pelham during this thoroughly absorbing hour.
And, horribly, Jonny knows all about that, his previous show being an award-winning performance dealing with his being sexually abused as a child.
But don’t worry, as the man himself is quick to explain, this show’s not about that, it’s about dealing with the after-effects of revealing that to the nation on Live At The Apollo!
I hummed and hawed about putting that exclamation mark there but that’s what Jonny does, he talks about the darkest subject matter with an infectious, and often jaw-dropping cheek – the same cheeky charm that lets him get away with describing that night’s crowd as “a mixed-ability room”.
You’ll go a long way to find a more likeable stage presence than our Jonny, even if his description of himself read, “Cleft lip, webbed toes, more nipples than is ideal…”
He believes comedy can talk about important issues, hence his total honesty about a hugely significant experience in his life and his ongoing attempts to come to terms with it.
He now feels he made a mistake revealing his biggest secret but perhaps the bigger mistake was telling everyone he had dealt with the trauma when, truthfully, he really hadn’t.
Jonny started to fall out of love with comedy, wondering whether it was his trauma rather than his comic talent that had got him his two biggest breaks on TV – neither of which he enjoyed despite dreaming of them for years.
Much of this show deals with his ongoing struggles and therapy, and in various moments I felt you could see that he was working through things even as he was delivering shocking punchlines and revelations.
Comedy has been Jonny’s life and way of understanding the world since he was 18 and you could tell how comfortable he feels on stage by the way he dealt with a mic problem halfway through – and with the somewhat overly-helpful section of the crowd that not only offered technical advice but also reminded him of where he’d got to!
He then effortlessly sidestepped a potential banana skin later on when he realised his next gag was going to be a call-back to a joke he forgot to tell during the sound difficulties and would make precisely zero sense!
That would have been in stark contrast to the rest of this moving hour in which it is abundantly apparent that – thankfully – Jonny is continuing to use comedy to make sense of things.
Jonny Pelham: Optimism Over Despair
Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs)
18:50
Until August 27
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jonny-pelham-optimism-over-despair
