Edinburgh 2022: Review: LAURA DAVIS-IF THIS IS IT, Monkey Barrel Comedy (Carnivore)

Performing at the Fringe for the fourth year now, Laura Davis returns to Edinburgh with her newest one hour show If This Is It. "This is not an angry show" Davis assures us, later explaining that she does not hate the world, she loves it and hates seeing it be destroyed. An undoubtable resemblence to the material of the late great George Carlin if ever there was one.

Things get off to a rocky start when Davis looks at her watch and states "there's 40 minutes left of this show-" and your first thought is "40 more minutes!?"

Although she claims it is not an angry show you could be fooled. It is all well and good to wrap things up by saying that you are not angry and that this isn't an angry show but for it to mean anything that message must be intertwined within your material. With Laura Davis, it isn't. She simply states what is wrong with the world without adding much humour or levity to them, leading to a depressing hour filled with very few laughs.

On top of things like capitalism, climate change, Covid-19, Davis tackles topics such as education and misogyny. In particular, Davis challenges male comedians, claiming that due to her gender her work only gets 50% of its due. There is no denying that this is the case for many brilliant female comedians, however, for Davis it seems to be more of a excuse than a fact. A get-out-of-jail-free card for when someone says the show isn't very good, rather than just accepting that they may have a point. The idea that Davis is not willing to hear negative reviews seems all but certain when you notice that she does not allow audience reviews of the show on her Fringe page.

This matter of misogyny that Laura Davis tackles is brought to a whole new level when she mentions that she would struggle as a male comedian because she couldn't help but expose herself to her colleagues or audience much like Jerry Sadowitz or Louis C.K. before then hilariously bringing out her right, taped up boob. The problem with this bit, other than lasting for what feels like forever, is that in both cases that Davis references, the comedians taking out their genitalia was never seen as funny. Louis C.K. was basically cast out of society and Sadowitz was famously booted from the Fringe. They were never seen as funny nor does Davis ever claim that it was funny or even done for laughs. Therefore, when Davis performs her version of this it also isn't funny.

Throughout the hour it honestly seems as though the person who finds Davis funniest is Laura Davis herself. Luckily for any of the nonbelievers in the room she assures us that she's been doing stand-up for a long time and that she is very good at it. But is she trying to convince us or herself?

When she isn't patting herself on the back Davis continuously refers to the fact that her show was written in 2020 and that much of her material is outdated, probably doesn't work etc. Worse than that, however, throughout the show Davis tells jokes before then going on to explain the jokes themselves. An absolute sin in comedy that any schmuck off the street knows. If you have to explain your jokes, they are not funny.

It may be unfair to say this. There are many comedians who either self deprecate on stage or perform as though they are smug and arrogant in their ability. Comedy, all in all, is a show. It's a performance. These people are not actually smug and arrogant (well, most aren't) but they are playing a character and they are convincing as that character. Davis is never convincing in her role.

As if all of this wasn't good enough, throughout the show Davis attempts to get the crowd involved, screaming chants down the mic (your ears will never recover) and stomping her mic stand on the ground for what feels like twenty straight minutes. No one joins in. She tries and tries again, still no one joins in. It is painful.

Admittedly there were a few laughs in the audience throughout the show. It does seem that Davis does have an audience. However, when that audience makes up less than one third of the room, maybe that isn't a good sign.

Laura Davis: If This Is It is a painful hour of "comedy" if you could call it that and overall it's probably for the best that you stay well out of the vicinity of Monkey Barrel in the hour that Davis is performing.

Laura Davis-If This Is It is at the Monkey Barrel until 28 August

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