EDINBURGH 2026: Review: ¡AY! PAPI: JILBERTO SOTO, Just The Tonic

The Edinburgh Fringe is a tricky beast. Some get lucky, like Ania Magliano or Ayo Adenekan, and sell out their entire debut run. Others get several no-shows and make it their whole personality in the hopes that Edinburgh Live will pick it up and somebody somewhere might check out their show out of pity. When Jilberto Soto walks on stage to a half-filled room, though, he simply claims, “wow, another sellout,” and moves on. It’s funny, it’s sassy, and it immediately has us on his side.

So, when the comic starts talking about his life as a gay, first-generation Mexican American, we find ourselves relating to his upbringing. Of course, many in the room are not gay, Mexican, or American, but the comedian’s stage presence is so charming that you can’t help but search for common ground.

Of course, it helps that the stand-up constantly has us in fits of laughter. Some of his best lines come when he is telling the audience about his time as a farm worker. “People always ask me, ‘Were you a good farm worker?' Bitch, I’m gay, I know how to pick a fruit.” The comedian never shies away from darker material, either. In one story, where he talks about his jealousy of Norma, the farmhand who drove the tractor, he reasons, “I only got to drive the tractor when Norma called in sick. So, I was over the moon when we found out she had cancer.”

Very few stand-ups can balance tone so well, but Soto makes it look effortless. Even after pushing us to such depths, he always keeps us on his side. Partially, it is because the comic never fails to show us the darker, more intimate moments of his own life, too. 

¡Ay! Papi is a show about fatherhood, not just in name but in its very nature. Throughout the show, the stand-up reassures us, “I love my dad”, but that never stops him from showing us the ugly side of his father, or himself, for that matter. But through looking at his own life and by accepting his own imperfections, the comedian comes to understand the man who raised him.

Sometimes the best Fringe shows are the ones that allow us to look inward and understand ourselves a little bit more through laughter. With his latest hour, Jilberto Soto delivers exactly that. ¡Ay! Papi is a wonderful show that is sure to make Jilberto Soto a new Fringe favourite. 

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