The US comedian Martin Urbano has always enjoyed mocking lazy standup jokes – the sort of routines that open with “Anyone ever been to a …?” or a crude comedian’s gags about his imaginary wife. Immediately after the #MeToo movement, the “hacky premises” of such material shifted, he says. “There were a lot of guys like: ‘I’m scared to even sneeze around a woman. I’m scared to fart around a woman!’” Urbano started working up material in character as one of those guys.
He thought comedy would move on quickly, but that didn’t happen. Instead, “you can’t say anything any more” became a common refrain, while famous comedians such as Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais direct jokes at trans people in their comedy specials.
“These millionaires are complaining,” says Urbano. “I want to make fun of them, but instead people rush to their defence.” His evolved character is now in a show called Apology Comeback Tour at the Edinburgh fringe. In the act, Urbano performs aggressive crowdwork, talks about his penchant for young girls and inadvertently, in role, exposes other unsavoury behaviour. There are themes and phrases that will be familiar to those with knowledge of certain controversial comedians, although Urbano refuses to be drawn on exactly who inspired him.
Zoë Coombs Marr is more forthcoming. Her character Dave, an “aggressively mediocre” open-mic comedian, has existed for nearly a decade. He was created in response to experiences on the Australian circuit, where men would regularly throw out rape jokes, racism and homophobia.
She retired him a few years ago, but around the time of Chappelle’s latest special, felt compelled to resurrect him. “The reason for bringing him back is it does feel like we’re in this regressive moment of backlash,” she says. In the show, Dave has just awoken from a coma, he tells his classic jokes and talks about his penis.
Coombs Marr shows us the transition to Dave on stage, attaching patchy facial hair before us. Becoming Dave is “frighteningly easy”, she says. “When I first started developing him, I used to get in character by harassing my girlfriend. Dave’s not allowed in our house now.” He is “lurching” and “always licking the inside of his own mouth”, so Coombs Marr gets a “whole-body workout”.
Rosie Holt becomes a number of horrible characters, signalling the shifts with changes of jacket and mannerisms. “I’m fascinated by MPs and the blurring of lines with entertainment,” she says. “It’s worrying that we’ve got MPs rehabilitating themselves through entertainment. GB News can feel like propaganda because you’ve got MPs putting forward the government’s view and nobody counteracting it.” Her characters, Conservative MP Rosie Holt and TV personality Harriet Langley-Swindon, join forces on stage to demonstrate that weakening distinction.
Holt has inhabited her characters so successfully that they’re often mistaken for real people. Both have posh accents, although Harriet’s is “more clipped” and she’s “much more forthright”. The MP has verbal tics, inspired by real politicians. “With both characters, I straighten my hair. They’re more ironed out than I am.”
All three performers try to find elements of truth in their characters. “Even if they’re really absurd, it’s about rooting it in reality,” says Holt. “There needs to be complexity and realness or you can’t spend a lot of time with the character,” says Coombs Marr.
Satirising an unsavoury character by becoming them is a tricky business. You have to push it far enough, while ensuring audiences understand the joke. “Saying things in the most ridiculous way possible is helpful,” says Urbano. “I’ll go: ‘You can’t do anything any more!’ Then just start making sounds. These guys are whining, so let me whine.”
He has cut jokes when he felt people were laughing for the wrong reasons. At one point he states: “It’s a scary time to be a man. Clap if you agree.” If men do clap: “I’ll say: ‘If you’re around someone who clapped, watch your drinks.’ That’s a signal to people [that] that’s not what I wanted. That’s the one concession I’ll make.”
Coombs Marr starts this show as herself, bringing us in on the Dave conceit. She used not to, but with things feeling “scary” for LGBTQ+ people especially, she wants everyone in on the joke. “There are still jokes people don’t know if they can laugh at, which is kind of the point. It’s making people question what they’re laughing at – which angle am I laughing from?” Some performers do ironic racist or sexist jokes: “But if the audience isn’t aware of the irony, it’s just racism or sexism.”
Holt’s characters share anti-poor and anti-immigrant sentiments and sometimes audiences react with horror rather than laughter: “You have to acknowledge it in character, even just with a look, because it shows the audience it’s in there for a reason.” It can feel bad, but “it’s also quite fun. I worry about offending people in day-to-day life. I quite like inhabiting characters who don’t.”
Playing his cancelled comedian is “a curse I’ve put upon myself”, says Urbano. But when people really get it (some tell him it’s “cathartic”) that feels good. “Aren’t we all supposed to be making fun of the top, the millionaires, keeping everybody in check?” he asks.
Coombs Marr agrees: “People are emboldened in their prejudices by a comedian giving them permission to laugh. Comedy can be a powerful thing. It’s a cop-out to say it doesn’t matter.”
Creating this show has made Holt consider that more than ever. With her MP character, “I wanted to see an innocence with her, that she’s just passing on her party’s opinion. But actually, those people are causing so much damage.”
Comedy can be the perfect way to turn the darkness of these characters into something positive. “This character does come from real frustration and anger,” says Coombs Marr, “but it’s about pushing through that to a place of joy.”
• Martin Urbano: Apology Comeback Tour, Zoë Coombs Marr: The Opener and Rosie Holt: That’s Politainment! are all at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August
