Comedy review: Reginald D Hunter - Edinburgh Playhouse

Hunter has lost his faith in almost everything: religion, society and the economy. And like Gaye this means he swings between despairing about what’s going on and talking about getting it on. “The system” is his problem, sex is his refuge.

This show is a mature 90 minutes of comedy, never a machine-gun barrage of gags.

Hunter, a native of Georgia, USA, and veteran of many a Fringe, balances great skits about inspecting hard-to-reach parts of one’s anatomy with hushed five-minute meditations on “being natural”.

The African-American experience is full of “bullshit”, he says: the collective memory handed to him of lynchings in Georgia is part of the system’s plan to keep people apart. “Check your values,” he says. “Make sure they are your own.”

At times, this soul-searching makes him appear starkly alone on stage, with Edinburgh’s cavernous Playhouse looming over him. Yet he always mounts a counteroffensive with an explosive one-liner, delivered with metronomic timing.

At the end of an excellent extended riff on talking to his chaste Christian sister about sex, he admits only during sex is he carefree. Ultimately, like Gaye before him, Hunter has turned away from the world and into the bedroom. On the evidence here, this retreat is a triumph.

Rating: ****