Rob Copland didn’t want to be at this year’s festival he huffs. Coming hard upon his daughter being born and a breakdown of sorts, the 2024 Edinburgh Panel Prize winner hasn’t had the career bounce he’d hoped for. He faces the dilemma of many an acclaimed alternative act getting older: double down or walk away, commit or quit. For now though, he’s squaring the circle by decrying his lot. Taking the stage, middle fingers raised, he does at least appreciate it’s a rough time for most people and takes solace in the whimsical distraction of yodelling.
Still, he’s battling his physical ambivalence to performing, rating his purist’s love of it against those in it for exploitation. While he offers some possible mitigation for Huw Edwards’ disgrace, he’s got no clemency in his heart for comedy’s most toxic wrong ‘uns, advocating erecting a guillotine, demanding the crowd howl out names for dispatch. Brutal, transgressive of comedy’s tacit code of complicity, there’s cathartic release in the moment. Further relating his professional woes, which approached rock bottom in India, he at least found some spiritual perspective there. And scrambling, the show just about makes the 45-minute mark, the escalating orgy of mimed ultra-violence he ends with ridiculous in its excess.
Rob Copland: ONE (more please), Monkey Barrel Comedy (O’Neill’s, The Tron), until 30 Aug (not 26), 5.50pm