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JOSHUA ROBERTSON: ENABLE ME

Gag Reflex

Comedy

Venue:Bar 50, Within A&O Edinburgh City Hostel, 50 Blackfriars Street Edinburgh EH1 1NE
Phone: 0131 524 1989
Links: Click Here for venue details, Click here for map
Ticket Prices: Free & Unticketed  
Room: The Garden Room
AUG 11-18 at 15:00 (60 min)
 
Show Image

Enable Me explores the ups and downs of being a disabled dad and family life. Drawn from Joshua’s experiences, he sheds a unique light on daily life through a once able bodied person’s eyes. Now, as Joshua embraces his identity as a gay man, he has discovered a fresh channel for expressing his witty and dark sense of humour.
As seen on BBC3 and Dave TV.


News and Reviews for this Show

August 14, 2024  Chortle
Joshua Robertson’s sweet and often filthy show is billed as kind of a confessional, purporting to 'explore the ups and downs of being a disabled dad' and 'shed a unique light on daily life through a once able-bodied person’s eyes'.

These blurbs are often written long before work starts on writing the actual show, so no shade should be cast for deviating from the plan, but Robertson’s show is interesting in that it’s almost a spoof of the show he initially pitched.

Enable Me instead plays out as a kind of bawdy farce. After Robertson’s wife invites another man into their bedroom, the couple are set on a series of twists and turns involving mothers-in-law and sex dungeons that have more in common with a kind of tavern story. I’m a pretty gullible person, but it didn’t have the ring of truth to me.

His opening material comes from a more familiar place. Robertson is profoundly disabled following a motorbike crash when he was 11 years old that left him in a coma for more than four months, and a lot of his club material brings to mind early Rosie Jones or Lost Voice Guy – riffs on life as a disabled person that challenge the audience’s expectations while getting them comfortable with laughing at jokes that no one else could make.

This material is often broad, and the dick jokes not as creative as they might be, but his impact is generally greater the harder he goes. His interactions with a game audience member are a clear highlight. 'Robbie, does your mum wank you off? I would recommend it.'

His open, appealing performance style and lack of guile let him get away with questions and interactions that would be hair-raising for anyone else.

As for the rest of it, you can’t help feeling it would have more impact if there was a greater sense of realism to the narrative, but it’s peppered with fun lines throughout, and Robertson deserves credit for following his muse rather than giving people the show they might think they want. Click Here

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