Theatre review: Don't Be Terrible, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Don't Be Terrible, Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) * * *
I'm just getting used to my new life as a stand-up comedy reviewer, when the tone suddenly shifts and I'm in a smart little theatre piece about the mechanics behind "technically well-structured" gags, as well as the everyday tragedies, both on and off stage, that make certain kinds of comedy so effective.
Through a relationship that's refreshingly lacking in sexual chemistry between stand-up Alice and her unlikely protégé Steve, who works in Comms, what we find funny and why is picked apart.
Steve, who starts every anecdote with "I really love my girlfriend," has a lot to learn, but it's only through the implosion of his personal life that he starts to get funnier. The stereotype of the 'tears behind a clown' is ever looming, but Ellen Waddell and Oliver Milburn's writing has some great twists, warmly performed by Elly Condron and Daniel Cech-Lucas.
A snappy little piece rather than something that delves too deeply, it's a playful exploration of the real emotions that comedy is so brilliantly, and perhaps also destructively, able to cover up.
Until 26 August