The Mash House
Aug 10-13, 15-27 (18:25)
Homo Homini Lupus
ot Much is probably the most misleading show title of The Fringe, so far. Ollie Horn gives a lot. A lot of laughs, a lot of anecdotes, a lot of energy, and a huge dollop of personal investment, in his commitment to the audience.
I caught Ollie last year in a double-hander with the fine Katheryn Henshaw, and whilst in that set he fired out X rated gags at a rapid fire pace, here his focus is on using his stage to craft an hour of tight and gripping storytelling. Ollie shows off the skills he’s woven together from 10yrs of stand up, words of wisdom from an unexpected famous patron, and the skills of the therapist he’s been seeing since his apocalyptic 2021.
Ostensibly this is a show about the last 10 years of Ollie’s stand up career and the worst gigs he’s experienced in that time. It is, in truth, nothing less than an hour of escapist perfection, wrapping pathos in genuine laughs, and inspiring bonhomie rather than pity or cynicism. We begin with a topically familiar story about a Fringe audience in the single digits, move on through astonishingly comedic ‘step-family’ grief, take a detour via an unexpected cameo from a famous joke thief, and end up on the other side of the world where Ollie plays a gig that nobody wants to happen and is at threat of being derailed by an ex girlfriend, a disgruntled prostitute, and a coma.
What’s truly remarkable about Ollie Horn’s set is that it could so easily dawdle into the territory of countless mawkish ‘Fringe Favourites’ of the last 5 years. Selling grief to pay off the Promoters. Instead, the journey we’re taken on of alcoholic relatives, death, paragliding as robbery, and fist fights with sex workers, provides us with, as Ollie himself puts it ‘Intellectual Homeostasis. That space of mind to be found in running, being in the outdoors, being gripped by Succession, or dancing in a dark club. Absolute lack of concern. He also manages the first original ‘BBC light entertainment’ joke I’ve heard in about 5 years, no mean feat.
Clearly Ollie Horn loves stand-up, despite it often not loving him. In this hour however they are very much a match made in heaven.
Ewan Law
Mumble Comedy 