Am I the Larry Dean jinx? Last time I saw his show when he'd been nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2018 somebody in the audience had an epileptic fit and the show had to be suspended. This time Dean, nominated again, was going great guns when someone in the front row seemed to take unwarranted offence at a spot of friendly banter. Shortly afterwards they walked out, temporarily shiftng the dynamic of the gig.
Fortunately Dean is experienced enough to deal with something like this and if anything the audience was even more on his side, but it just goes to show that even a seasoned pro can be hit by something out of the blue.
Fudnut is an interesting show for another reason. Edinburgh shows are usually relatively new, but it was announced that Dean was doing a tour called Fudnut back in October 2019. We all know that schedules have been disrupted and I don't know how similar Dean's show is to the original Fudnut that toured down under. There is certainly topical and personal material in it that he could not have done before this year, particularly regarding the death of a close friend.
Anyway, all of this is the preamble to saying that Dean's show is a fabulous tale, framed around being stopped by airport security in Abu Dhabi. But behind the inevitable gags about intimate searches there's a deeper emotional through line about mental health. Dean is very good at balancing the populist with the honest, never more so than when he talks about his therapy sessions and does the old trope about Glaswegian accents sounding so threatening there was even a degree of menace to his therapy.
Dean has an absolute mastery of stand-up, pulling faces, putting on voices, never missing a beat or the chance of a punchline. Occasionally he is so good it feels like a consummate actor following a script and playing a stand-up archetype. Except that no actor is this good. Dean, being Scottish, would be a very popular winner of Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Award when the winner is announced on Saturday afternoon. I don't know if he will win it, but if you want belly laughs with a coating of candour about mental health, relationships and sadness, there is no better option.
Edinburgh Fringe Review: Larry Dean, Fudnut, Monkey Barrel. Until Aug 28. Tickets here.
four stars
