Comedy review: Andrew Lawrence Is Coming To Get You, Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), Edinburgh

By JAY RICHARDSON
Published on 06/08/2012 16:13

THIS might be “the most uplifting show you’ll see at this year’s Fringe”, as Andrew Lawrence is goading critics to acknowledge. Because, as he sadistically reiterates, death is inevitable.

Andrew Lawrence is Coming to Get You

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

Rating: ***

Repeatedly threatening to burn his venue to the ground, with a serial killer’s clinical precision and irrepressible misanthropy, the avowedly “odd”, self-loathing 32-year-old locates the pain and horror in every fatuous aspect of our idiotic, obese society, a shop assistant’s casual inquiry eliciting an elongated, existential howl of despair. With breath-stealing panache and downright nasty audacity, he evokes solidarity with the Denver Batman gunman, daring you not to laugh.

An ostensibly useless English literature degree prompted this dreadful, stalling career, but it also furnished Lawrence with a rich, broad palette of bleak imagery and insult. His alleged fronting of a typically inane BBC Three docu-freakshow about stand-ups and mental illness suggests a deliciously inappropriate, believable title.

Lawrence leans on grotesque pullback-and-reveal gags, and there are too many interchangeable, head-of-steam extended rants, even if some are delivered as psychotic singsongs, his otherwise “creepy” voice satanically angelic. But a few chuckling head-shakes at his own overkill endearingly stem the relentless tsunami of bile.

• Until 26 August. Today 8:50pm.