From The Comic's Comic

The 2024 Edinburgh Fringe officially opens Aug. 2, and runs through Aug. 26, with shows in previews earlier this week.

Are you ready for me to experience the Edinburgh Fringe in person for a third consecutive August? Am I prepared?

I’ve built a page here on From The Comic’s Comic where all of my reviews will be aggregated and sorted by how I rated them, and when and where I saw them. Individual show reviews will live as individual posts on my legacy site, The Comic’s Comic.

And here are a few thoughts on some 2024 Fringe shows that I saw in New York City over the past few months.

Josh Thomas: Let’s Tidy Up ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thomas appeared on my podcast back in 2020, and I got to see his latest show in person this June at SoHo Playhouse in NYC.

Josh’s life is a mess, even if it’s not as apparent as the mess he’s already made onstage with scraps of paper, but this gay autistic ADHD Australian comic, who first starred in the series, Please Like Me, now finds himself years later still wanting to be liked if not loved, and definitely not wanting a bigger commitment than that, even if he has gone Hollywood in recent years, quite literally. Fans who saw his follow-up Freeform/Hulu series, Everything’s Gonne Be Okay will be familiar with his culture shock, except in real life, Thomas struggled not with raising two young half-sisters, but with caring for a dog or even a garden. He’s not a crowd work comic, and he demonstrates why just in case you needed proof. Nevertheless, his charm overcomes the potential lack of a big message in the end.

Worse Than You ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A new play from Mo Fry Pasic, directed by former SNL writer Sudi Green, which I saw earlier this year at SoHo Playhouse.

Pasic plays a comedian named Jolie Klein who’s somehow too self-aware, as “Klein” navigates therapy and the minefield that is her string of exes and trauma and self-sabotage, trying to make sense of it all and still make it in show business. There’s a lot going on here, with Pasic playing a character who plays characters to unpack her emotional and mental baggage. But if you need a pull-quote, how about this: “A comedian doing a burlesque play about a TED Talk.”

CHUCK (stars TBD)

Lastly but not leastly, I caught Carolyn Castiglia’s final warm-up performance at QED Astoria before she makes her Edinburgh debut as part of PBH’s Free Fringe 2024.

Castiglia’s grandparents died in a murder-suicide in 1995 while she was away at school, and almost two decades later, she’s ready to connect the dots and work the through-line on how her grandfather’s behavior might, in turn, explain her behavior now. There are tangents both delightfully odd (Olympic figure-skating, anyone?) and terribly sad (reflecting upon a beloved comedian’s suicide years ago). Her epiphany? “I do not need to be a vessel for anyone else’s pain” If nothing else, Castiglia hopes that you come away from her show understanding and realizing the necessity of helping your friend clean their place. And by clean, she means just being there for emotional support. And no need to email your critiques of her show to her, either. She’ll demonstrate why not.