Adam Riches: Rogue Males

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Adam Riches will be hoping that his luck has improved significantly since August last year when, midway through his critically acclaimed 2008 run, Lady Luck conspired to break his leg in a freak on-stage accident.

But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and Riches is now back in Edinburgh, again exploring his favourite topic: the daftness of masculinity. This year’s offering, Rogue Males, is a character comedy full of enough inherent silliness to just about work as what might be called a ‘straight’ comedy. But it’s not flawless: like so many character comedies, when a particular persona doesn’t quite work the show falls a bit flat. This is particularly true of the big-game hunter O’Hara – not a poor character by any means, but one heavily reliant on cliché and certainly not worthy of the sizeable proportion of showtime allocated to him.

However, the character-comedy aspect is but a crutch upon which rests a near masterclass in interactive comedy. Audience participation can so often be a recipe for disaster; but Riches carries it off expertly, falling just about on the right side of naughty so as to never feel threatening. But that’s not to say that this reviewer wasn’t plagued with cold sweats every time the house lights went up!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rogue Males offers little in the way of daring physical stunts, the odd pratfall aside. But as a package, it combines just the right blend of daftness, witty asides and electric tension to make it Riches’ most accomplished Fringe performance to date.