Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray / Sam Lake

Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★

I have no idea what Sue Gray - the former senior civil servant who is now The Prime Minister’s right-hand woman - sounds like, but I’m guessing not someone who has stepped straight out of The Only Way Is Essex.

Hilariously, and to great effect, that is character comic Emma Sidi’s presentation of a woman finding herself at the heart of government without really knowing why.

“The last four years have been mental!” says “Sue Gray” as she introduces herself - Sue Gray refers to herself in the third person frequently, and always with her full name - as she explains how we find her here in her office at Westminster, having worked for Rishi Sunak as “a civvy servy” and now for Sir Keir Starmer.

Sunak wanted to be her friend as well as the office joker, she says, but she was having none of his pranking with staplers and glue sticks. Starmer, however, is a different kettle of fish; beneath that stern lawyerly exterior lies the beating heart of a man who doesn’t realise his appeal to ladies of a certain vintage.

It’s one of many indiscretions as we hear about, including Sue Gray’s fractious relationship with former Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick - “We was at university together” - and how she was tasked with investigating Partygate during Covid: “Fuck that shit!” She found doing the report rather boring, preferring to spend her time online shopping rather than investigating Boris Johnson’s boozing.

Sections delivered in cod Spanish – her “buffer language” for anything traumatic - about a creature trolling her and her love of the Marvel universe are nicely surreal but overlong, and the central premise of  Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray doesn’t quite sustain over an hour. But no matter as the laughs come thick and fast.

• Until 25 August

Sam Lake Monkey Barrel ★★★

Esmeralda tells the story of Sam Lake’s mother, who died when he was 18. For much of his early life, it was just the two of them as his dad left when he was young, and he builds a picture of a dreamy boy bullied at school who retreated into a make-believe world on television and, more particularly, the television adverts he and mother liked to watch together.

The show’s title, by the way, is not his mum’s name, but the monicker she had chosen for Lake had he been a girl and it’s a heartwarming tale about the man that his mum allowed him to be - confident, happy in his own skin and choosing to make his living as a performer. That message could be cheesy but Lake undercuts any sentimentality with arch comments or dreadful puns

The comic’s mum was Spanish but the young Lake never bothered to learn her language, belatedly addressing the deficiency by watching - what else? - TV ads in which Penelope Cruz appears. Along the way, Lake also talks about his mother’s take on Catholicism, his love of Ice Age movies and Zumba classes, and the rubbish sex education for a lad like him - a gay teenager - he received at school.

It’s a patchy hour and Lake’s delivery can be rather one-note, but there are some smart lines and callbacks - and it ends with a cheeky visual gag.

• Until 25 August
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