Brooklyn comedy duo Ashley Blair and Drew Reilly tackle existential angst with a pulsating late-night comedy rave at the Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh, in their show Fully Loaded. The pair, both Second City alumni, send up gen Z anomie with hardcore ditties about awkward dinners, megachurches and centaur boyfriends.
A celebration-cum-sendup of anomie
The show opens as if the audience is being seconded to a generational revolution, but it quickly becomes clear that Blair and Reilly are threats to nothing but the funny bone. Their premise is that life is void of meaning, and they flash back to meet themselves as alienated schoolkids.
One sketch, a silly symphony of clinking cutlery and ASMR tuts and sighs, imagines two parents at dinner struggling to repress their mutual loathing. If that is the hosts' generational inheritance, the show asks why not look for a better way of being, such as a romance with an inverted Centaur Boyfriend, the title of one daft ditty, or forming a megachurch to replenish the spiritual chasm.
Satire garnished with silliness
The megachurch sketch includes first-base satirical sideswipes against Christian homophobia and the church's obsession with sin. But Blair and Reilly's satire is usually garnished with, or eclipsed by, silliness, as they belt out songs about being bullied in bakeries and “gooning in the DJ booth”.
The songs are tightly constructed, lyrically adroit and delivered with hardcore hyperpop attack, which makes them all the funnier. Only occasionally does the standard slip: a skit about straight female writers fetishising gay male sex is on point but soon devolves into so-so smut.
High-energy comedy at the Underbelly
That dip is not going to fill anyone's gaping hole, but there is lots here that will, as Megasquirt minister to existential angst with whip-smart, high-energy comedy. The show runs at Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh, until 30 August.
