EDINBURGH 2026: Review: ROB PRESTON: AMAZING GLOBAL SOLUTIONS, Pleasance Courtyard

Rob Preston’s Amazing Global Solutions is a gloriously strange gallery of grotesques, populated by characters who are so worryingly fully formed that their absurdity becomes increasingly believable.

The sketch show opens with Bobby Prezinsky, a charisma free pub quiz host who is determined to keep his players focused on the lightning round, despite becoming distracted by his recent loss of Auntie Jean, her rollercoaster obsession and her smack habit. His increasingly bizarre quiz sponsor only adds to the wonderfully unpleasant chaos.

Preston then introduces Jack Declerk, CEO of Vibes and Talent, a South African motivational speaker addressing an unemployment conference in Sheffield. His mission is to empower young creators and transform delegates into supposedly wallet proof, waterproof and bulletproof entrepreneurs. After encouraging one audience member to help him perform a trust fall before subjecting him to an uncomfortably long hug, Jack checks whether the audience is AI, celebrating the “raw electric energy” of their apparent humanity.

The characters keep coming, from a Slovenian barber obsessed with Ibiza tunes and dancing, whose prejudices towards Hungarians are as ugly as they are absurd, to Jase, who attempts to establish a pop up clothing brand ‘Smoke Up Apparel’ shop while pretending to be edgy, despite having academic parents, coming from money and having a famous auntie in fashion. A southern American offering an online dating wishlist provides another deliciously uncomfortable portrait of modern masculinity.

Preston repeatedly returns to Bobby, whose increasingly madcap ideas include a teen sex centre and whose peculiar obsession with literacy somehow manages to become another source of comedy. One of the biggest highlights arrives with Rob, an ex army character banished from The Traitors, who suffers from “impostor syndrome” despite having caused serious harm.

The material is deliberately bleak, bizarre and often deeply uncomfortable, with many of Preston’s characters embodying the patriarchal attitudes, misogyny and toxic masculinity which the show gleefully skewers. The comedy comes from watching these people deliver horrific ideas with the absolute conviction that they are perfectly reasonable.

Preston is an accomplished character performer, giving each creation a distinct physicality, voice and worldview. Although the rapid fire succession of sketches occasionally makes the show feel slightly uneven, the commitment to every character keeps the hour engaging and unpredictable.

Amazing Global Solutions finds plenty to ridicule in internet culture, corporate speak, influencer culture and the more toxic corners of contemporary British society. It is strange, sharp and frequently outrageous, offering a very funny reminder of just how ridiculous some modern personalities can be, when their behaviour is taken to its logical extreme.

Rob Preston’s Amazing Global Solutions runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Below until 30t August (except Tuesday 18) 2026, at 8:20pm (1 hour)

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