Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
The Aussie standup ditches blithe character-comedy for a brave show that is often more sad than funny
No one who’s seen the Aussie act Steen Raskopoulos would associate him with trauma-as-comedy. While Richard Gadd and Hannah Gadsby won awards for their soul-bearing shows about sexual violence, Raskopoulos just kept on supplying blithe character-comedy about mournful horses, bank robberies and interpretive dance. But his latest show, Stay, pulls back the curtain on what we thought we were getting from Raskopoulos: not multi-role solo comedy but ceaseless voices in an unhappy man’s head; not (as per his signature sketch) faux-sentimental scenes about abandoned kids, but cries for help.
The moment in Stay that first implies this is beautifully handled. But I’m not sure Raskopoulos’s sad story has quite completed – or ever will – its transformation into comedy. The latter stages are terribly raw; the 31-year-old ends the show in tears. There’s no seeming catharsis in the telling, or sense of why he’s telling this story now.
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