Comedy review: Tom Lucy: Needs to Stop Showing Off in Front of His Friends

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Tour support for several big-name acts and signed to one of the most powerful comedy agencies, at just 21 Tom Lucy's potential is already self-evident.

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

***

But he doesn’t nail his fitfully funny debut, partly due to misreading his audience and partly because he doesn’t satisfyingly draw all the disparate strands together.

Establishing his persona early as a high-voiced, beta male misfit amongst his schoolfriends and family, he’s blessed with a few other quirks like medical complaints ascribable to men three times his age and an embarrassingly hot mother. He rather immaturely overplays his family and friends wondering if he’s gay, the reasons given for their uncertainty lacking authenticity. But against this solid background, he sets up the accounts of a lad’s holiday he took to Amsterdam, his father’s advice about how to approach women still ringing in his ears. Regrettably, this anecdote is not one of his stronger ones and certainly not strong enough to frame a Fringe hour with. Elsewhere, when Lucy’s playful, reasonably witty attempts at outrage comedy die hard, he struggles to move on and returns for more, his and the crowd’s obvious reluctance to meet halfway unheeded because he has no Plan B. He’ll produce better shows than this.