UK standup has a new superstar – and we have Covid (just a little bit) to thank. When Leo Reich was plotting his 2020 Edinburgh fringe debut, it was with a “a slightly template-y, self-pitying, anecdotal show,” he says, “about the various hardships I’ve been through. ‘It’s so hard that three people at school said something mildly homophobic to me,’ was essentially its grand narrative,” he recalls with a cringe. Then the coronavirus struck and Reich, along with countless other debutants, had to wait two years to bring his show to fruition.
The wait was a blessing in disguise. When Literally, Who Cares?! premiered this August, it wasn’t template-y, anecdotal or straightforwardly autobiographical. Instead it was “a parody of the original show I was going to do”, he says; a blistering set of how-real-is-this? comedy depicting the desperate egomania of a confused Gen-Z’er. Clad in clubbing-wear and eye makeup, the 24-year-old crystallised in one hour’s arch, camp comedy the plight of his generation, who are obliged to self-project all across social media and muster opinions about everything – sorry, “do the emotional labour of knowing stuff about things” – while terrified that those opinions, and their carefully curated selves, are hollow within. And all the while, society, the economy and their futures crumble around them.
