Andrew Maxwell is the type of comedian who seems effortlessly funny, rifingf off a topic to raucous laughter without much evidence of prior preparation. Whether this is true or not is immaterial. He masterfully works the crowd, inciting them to do a ‘dirty hum’, which sounds like ’20 pirates agreeing at once’, and comments on the unusually warm Scottish weather, quipping ‘bet you never thought you’d sweat in the rain.’
Maxwell entertains himself by thinking of the breadth of weird thoughts that populate people’s minds – and of those thoughts that enter the public consciousness, like the legalisation of cats being allowed to ride on buses in New Zealand (this is true).
Yet he is aware of how the internet offers a place to not only voice these weird thoughts, but also dangerous and violent ones – he says this as a man who received a death threat from ISIS’s Twitter account.
Maxwell describes himself as a ‘militant pacifist’. Having grown up as a Protestant on ‘the IRA side of Dublin’, he lives by the understanding that reason and logic will always be preferable to violent threats and murder. However, he says, Brexit is testing this belief.
Maxwell bounces from the state of Britain to the anti-Semitism of alien-believing conspiracy theorists, from race relations in New Zealand to online abuse on Twitter, yet each section feels fully formed and fleshed out: nothing is included just for the sake of it.
While his take on feminism and women’s rights – ‘eh fair enough, good for you birds’ – feels slightly limp, his comments in support of the Me Too movement are funny and fairly astute, namely regarding the quantity of dirt dredged up by men in response, and how this exposes men, rather than the women they are attempting to deride.
This is intelligent comedy for the masses. I’d far rather hear Maxwell’s take on the news in the morning rather than having to read the actual news – his digestion of political events and social complexities presents issues in a way which makes them human, and relatable. I learnt more about the Irish border – ‘the Irish border is the beach’ - in ten minutes of Maxwell’s set than I have done by reading newspapers daily for five years.
Maxwell’s career has so far spanned over two decades, and from the easy intelligence of Shake a Leg, it’s not hard to see why. His latest Edinburgh show is topical and consistently funny, sure to appeal to anyone and everyone even vaguely concerned about the state of the world.
Andrew Maxwell: Shake a Leg is playing 15th – 26th August at 9pm at Assembly George Square Theatre (The Theatre)
For tickets and more information, click here
0 Comments