There are plenty of shows in Edinburgh that do their job, tick the requisite boxes and entertain their audience, but what makes the Fringe truly thrilling is seeing a new talent making their mark.
And without a shadow of a doubt one of the most exciting breakout stars this year is Leo Reich, whose debut Literally Who Cares?! is deservedly playing to packed, ecstatic audiences every night.
Reich is 24 and has all the modern fixations that are mandatory for someone in their mid-20s. He cannot do anything without posting about it on social media. He lives for Instagram and Love Island. Everything is on the surface and on TikTok. The crucial difference here is that Reich engages with it all with an Olympic level of self-awareness and irony.
Never has someone so young had such a sophisticated sense of their own absurdity. He thinks he is so entitled that at one point he announces that he has already written his autobiography so that his life can be turned into a movie. And then he imposes cringeworthy excerpts from it on us.
His stage persona positively oozes privilege as he quips about being sponsored by the bank that his father works for. When it comes to discussing gender, he delivers politics and punchlines: “When our grandparents were growing up things were simple, you were either a man or woman. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, it’s all non-binary, Uber Eats. It’s very confusing.”
He is not sure what he believes in any more because he wrote his beliefs on his old phone and lost it.Like a number of excellent shows on this year’s Fringe – Jordan Gray’s Russell-Brand-meets-Tim-Minchin stylings is another – there is music too, with Reich’s camp, high-voltage verbal fusillades punctuated by serio-comic songs.
He taps into the same kind of self-obsession as Bo Burnham did in 2010 when he broke through. Except that Reich goes further, convinced that he is the centre of the universe, singing “I will never not exist, because I am life’s protagonist.”
His voice is good, his gags impressive, if at times so on brand it is difficult to tell whether he wants to be a spokesperson for Generation Z or satirise the whole shallow shebang. Probably both. This is a rare hybrid of character comedy and confessional.
In a fleeting moment of sincerity, he recalls being bullied at school for being gay. He is now bisexual: “Ninety per cent gay, 10 per cent absolutely committed to proving kids in Year Nine wrong.”Utterly insufferable. Gloriously egocentric. Literally brilliant. Tweet all your friends about this one. If that’s still a thing.
