The big word-of-mouth comedy hit at the 2024 Fringe is this outlandish yet perversely enjoyable late night gem from newcomer Huddersfield comic Joe Kent-Waters.
Kind of like the degenerate, basement-raised offspring of ‘Phoenix Nights’ and ‘League of Gentlemen’ - not to mention Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’ - the nominal premise is that 24 years ago, Rotherham working men’s club owner Frankie made a pact with infernal powers: they offered him a wish and he asked that they preserve his club exactly how it was - immune to the outside world - until such time as they would return to drag him into hell.
I would say that one hundred percent explains what happens in this show, but that’s kind of beside the point. Lumbering on in thick white face makeup that dissolves throughout the sweaty set, Monroe seems part infernal himself. Acting as emcee, he presides over a series of bizarre games, guest acts (all played by Kent-Waters) and audience interactions that do not in any way feel like they would have seemed current in the late ‘90s, or probably the early ’70s.
I was, er, delighted to find myself the participant in one of the interactions: early on Kent-Waters/Frankie – who is a pretty big lad it has to be said – demanded I hand over my wallet. Throughout the remainder of the night I was given a series of absurd, rigged opportunities to win it back – like guessing which marigold glove was filled with scampi fries. That sort of thing.
Kent-Waters is a hugely gifted comic presence and he’s created a very amusing monster, fusing something very relatable with something totally batshit and for whatever reason it just works.
The deal with the devil hovers in the background and gives an added layer of strangeness. But Kent-Waters is right not to overplay it – it doesn’t really become a major thing until the very end, more exists to accentuate that sense of stepping into some old fashioned institution and feeling like you’ve stepped into another dimension. Whatever, it’s a ridiculous and sinister night out and I hope Kent-Waters gets a full quarter century of deserved success before he is rightfully sucked into hell.