Edinburgh Festival, review, Mark Steel - Every Little Thing is Gonna Be Alright: He gets his many easy blows in early and then moves on

An hour plus of fierce, propulsive, late-night stand-up from Mark Steel, who guides the audience through his divorce, privatisation, the housing crisis, and even the state of the trains in Britain

Mark Steel performs 'Every Little Thing is Gonna Be Alright' at the Edinburgh Festival

“Do you think I should have put this show off until next year, so it was a bit less bitter?” asks Mark Steel, pausing amid a cornucopia of eloquent fury to take stock of whether such a wealth of glorious pissed-offness is still socially acceptable. He’s been writing his latest Fringe show since back in the spring, and its subtitle was originally meant to be decidedly tongue-in-cheek; post-Brexit, post-Trump, with the prospect of a Tory landslide looking likely in the general election and in the midst of his own divorce, Steel came to the task of writing infuriated and ready to vent.

Theresa May’s election pratfalling aside, not much has changed, and Steel is happy to milk every imagined, excruciating detail of May’s overnight realisation of what was going on, for those who may not have done so already. Those who read his columns on these pages will know his politics are resolutely of the left, but party political tubthumping for the gallery hasn’t been interesting in comedy since the 1980s, and Steel gets his many easy blows in early and then moves on. The rest of the show is more subtle – as subtle as impotent anger gets, anyway – and created from universal themes.

Not that wry laughter at naked hubris isn’t an activity for all to participate in, no matter how grudgingly. Elsewhere, Steel guides us through his divorce in frank fashion, and without resorting to an easy procession of “women, eh?” gags. He gets to be annoyed at his former partner and himself, although there are some fierce get-it-off-your-chest one-liners about the demands of his job (“do you want me to give Brighton [his home city] a venue number and call it part of the Edinburgh Festival?”) and his ex’s choice of dog.

Digging deeper, Steel rues the process of material separation which happens during a divorce, bringing up the subject of money. Why does everything always come back to money, he wonders? And from there he’s onto privatisation, the housing crisis, the state of the trains in Britain and Brighton in particular; unlike last year’s Fringe show, a gentler, more reflective piece about his own adoption, this is an hour plus of fierce, propulsive, late-night stand-up which combines the natural compassion of Steel’s material with a testing of the edges of “political correctness” (his use of the term). Everything is really going to be alright, the message seems to be, when we let ourselves get as angry as this.