Waxing Cynical: FREE

Rightly or wrongly, Fringe-goers are notoriously dubious about free shows during the Festival. However, Waxing Cynical isn’t free - it’s FREE; right there in the title, in big can’t-be-missed capital letters. This is enough to start alarm bells ringing but reserving judgement, I take a seat three floors underground in the Laughing Horse at Espionage – a venue by day, a nightclub by night. Ignoring the fact that it still smells of last night’s spilled pints and the vague scent of vomit, the audience await the comedy with baited breath. A technical glitch means that Waxing Cynical is ten minutes late going up; this is not a good start. When it does finally get underway, an air-conditioning unit centred above the stage is so loud that we’re straining to hear what’s being said. The cast try to turn it off, to no avail.

The play itself centres on a call-centre worker called Anna who has just broken-up with her fiancée (outside a bingo hall wearing a bikini and inflatable rubber ring). In random musings and sketches Anna and her colleague search for an answer to that age-old question: as imperfect beings why do we strive for perfection in our partners? Perhaps unsurprisingly, nothing new is discovered in their quest. The jokes are, for the most part, recycled and unoriginal. In fact, the biggest laugh comes at the end when, bizarrely, a guitar player who has been silent for virtually the whole set interrupts to deliver a dead-pan punch-line about Gary Glitter. There are great free shows at the Fringe but Waxing Cynical isn’t one of them; the lack of price is its only selling factor.