Edinburgh Festival review, Mark Thomas: A Show That Gambles on the Future, Summerhall: 'Inquisitive and acerbic'
After Brexit and Trump, who really knows what’s going to happen next? None of us, of course, and that includes every columnist and commentator you’ve ever heard offer a prediction on a subject of any significance. Don’t look to Mark Thomas, either – he’s not offering any answers here, instead he’s channelling our collective cluelessness into an hour of cathartic entertainment in which we laugh not just at the world but at our own divergent understandings of it.
Some may have been wondering why Thomas has jumped the fence back over to Summerhall from the Traverse this year, having staged acclaimed and award-winning pieces of personal storytelling theatre like Bravo Figaro! and The Red Shed at the latter venue in recent years. The simple reason is that – despite an engaging high concept and a little unrelated reminiscing about his short-tempered builder father woven throughout – this is more or less a return to stand-up.
The audience have been canvassed in the queue with slips of paper which invite them to guess what one thing might happen in the future, be it outlandish or predictable, and Thomas spends most of the time simply reading through them and discussing the subjects they bring up, occasionally referring to contributions from past shows. The idea is that he and the audience single out their favourite prediction by a vaguely democratic “biggest cheer” process, then he solicits donations at the door and puts the lot on the winner; apparently the lady who checks specialist odds at his local Edinburgh bookie has been kept busy.
So it’s a simple enough idea to get a bit of banter going, ad-libbed as well as scripted, although there’s plenty that Thomas would have known to expect. “Trump will be assassinated/impeached”, “there will be a UK general election within the next year” and (big cheer for this) “Jeremy Corbyn will be Prime Minister” are all hurried through. As ever at a Mark Thomas gig, the left-leaning converted are being preached to, even though Thomas himself seems keen to engage in discussion with all comers.
One suggestion involving the exhumation of Margaret Thatcher, for example, is met with a ripple of laughter from the audience and a knowing eye-roll which says “you’ve gone too far there” from Thomas, although he seems happy to hear that one or two Brexiteers aren’t afraid to answer his open call for them to make their feelings known; even though he quickly and firmly shuts down the suggestion from one of them that Tony Blair be “given to ISIS”. In the end, the show leaves things as unresolved as the world around us, but at least Thomas has been an inquisitive and acerbic guide through it.
Until Sunday 27 August (not Mondays)
