Just the Tonic @ The Tron
Aug 3-12, 14-26 (21.00)

Material:   Delivery:   Laughs:

The Edinburgh fringe is phenomenal, just to see the craziness, of what all all these people are doing with their lives. It’s always so inspiring. It felt like running away to the circus for a week.
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Experiencing Barry Ferns the comedian work a room reminds me of Peter Oundjian conducting a symphonic orchestra. There is control & there is beauty. As an artist, Barry is not rude, nor is he shocking us for laughs – he doesnae need to be confrontational – he’s just happy to share with us all the one truth he knows, & we soon come to know, he gets comedy & he’s shit-hot at it too. He is what I would call a multi-generationalist, sweeping grandly over his topics from the millennials’ take on things & events, to the age-group of his sadly deceased grandfather – a man who turns up in this year’s show, fondly enough, via voice-overs recorded a decade ago.

Barry takes us on a personal journey, from playing with his birth-name Barry, to his hilarious experiences as a comedian in Sweden, & so much, so much, more. But that leads us to  the one flawback to his show – it feels too long. For Fringe audiences used to football-halves of comedy, Barry took us well beyond the sixtieth minute, drifting out of his well-sustained excellence & into feet-shuffling territory. At the start of ‘Barry Loves You’ it certainly felt as if I was watching a five-star show, & if Barry were to trim about fifteen minutes from his composition, then the malleable clay of his comedy will set into something we can define as a true objet d’art.

Damo