Aczel's comedy – high swear and low energy – has become famous in Fringe circles for him being the only performer to adopt this persona. It's dry and forthcoming and makes you experience a bad joke so fully that it becomes oddly funny.
The routine takes the structure of a kind of lecture led by a teacher who has no idea about what they are lecturing. Some comedians relish in self-deprecating humour, some in ridiculing something or some people in particular, Aczel does all of this and then some.
He passive-aggressively rubbishes any answer the audience gives him and it serves his persona of the boring uncle who is a lot older than your parents well. He has no problem reading his routine from a script and breaking down the elements of a stand up routine and then doing them without context.
Most of the segments are actually nonsense, such as one involving the countries that border China. This is actually one of the few parts that concerns the foreign. The driest of dry humour doesn't work for every gag – some are too tangential to be terribly funny but most of Aczel's anecdotes and gags are just absurd enough to made you laugh at the nonsense.
Deadpan, serious, unnerving, and yet still funny.
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Ed Aczel: Foreign Policy is on at 16:20 at Heroes @ The Hive until 28 August (exc. 16 August). For tickets and more information, visit the Fringe website.
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