Eddy Hare @ Pleasance Courtyard
This One's On Me, the solo Fringe debut from Crizards member Eddy Hare, is a whimsical, minor key delight
One half of comedy duo Crizards, Eddy Hare's debut solo show This One’s On Me is a whimsical, minor key delight. Deadpan and deliberate, Hare finds newly oblique ways into familiar subjects. One focus of the show is embodiment – from the sudden, alienating changes of puberty (a full set of pubes at the age of 9) to an ongoing adult preoccupation with physical flaws. Hare's schoolboy obsession with the size of his wrists is overtaken by a new anxiety about balding, part of a larger frustration with his appearance that all the tinkering – an earring, clothing, tattoos – doesn't quite appease. It's material that speaks to the troubled relationship we all have with both what we see in the mirror and how the world sees us.
It's quietly searching stuff but kept entirely light, tempered by the deadpan delivery, and Hare's gunslinger styling – eyes narrowed, he hitches his trousers and fixes the audience with a hard stare. It's an idiom he slips in and out of, and lends a dry, deliberate absurdity to the many excellent gags (the one about the smoking habits of his young cousin Miguel is a joy).
The gunslinger mode is also beautifully incongruous in relation to the other focus of the show: Hare's very evident love for his young nieces and his quest to be a fun uncle (a funcle, not a cuncle). One low point sees him at a birthday party, unable to compete with Magic Steve, and sat disconsolately outside the church hall, staring forlornly into his glass of orange squash.
Embodiment, masculinity, melancholy – plenty of other comics are addressing these issues in splashier style, but Eddy Hare's gently circumspect, understated approach has much to commend it.
Eddy Hare: This One's On Me, Pleasance Courtyard (Cellar), until 25 Aug, 5.30pm, £9-£14