RATING: 4/5
Alex Kealy will be perfoming Winner Takes All every afternoon at 4:15pm until Sunday, 28th August at Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive) – Hive 1.
POLITICAL comedian Alex Kealy returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with his newest show, Winner Takes All.
Alex is a very matter-of-fact comedian, delivering his jokes with a serious, to the point, but self-aware tone that immediately captivates the audience.
He jumps straight into his material from the second he arrives on stage, no messing around introducing himself, talking to audience members or setting up long term jokes.
He walks in with a quick: “Hey how you doing, thank you so much for coming to Edinburgh’s smelliest room.”
And then he gets straight to the funny stuff.
Alex’s new show focuses on Silicon Valley tech monopolies, the damage they do to us and his lockdown experiences.
He was recently broken up with by a girl that works at Google.
No correlation there, he jokes.
Kealy ploughs through his material quickly and displays a good level of self-awareness, pointing out his own biases where needed, but always in funny way.
Keeping things very current, as you’d expect from a political comedian, Alex goes after the tory party, Boris Johnson and tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Though the quick pace could be interpreted as him rushing or being nervous, you soon realise he’s just trying to squeeze in the plethora of great material he’s come up with.
Alex didn’t miss a single joke with every one getting a good laugh from the audience.
It’s somewhat of a shame the show is only an hour, as a little more time would perhaps have allowed him to deliver his material in a slower, calmer manner.
As it stands it’s hard not to feel a little bombarded with Kealy’s jokes as he makes his way very quickly through his set.
Regardless of this, Kealy creates a nice atmosphere which I can imagine is hard to do in such a hot and relatively small room where almost everyone probably felt pretty uncomfortable and sweaty.
It’ a great wee comedy show though, well worth seeing if you’ve got the time.
To read more of Deadline News’ dedicated coverage of the Edinburgh Fringe click here.
