Leo Reich’s ego fills up the room, smothering every single member of the audience. He’s self-obsessed but always self-aware, clever but always cool, and he embodies Gen-Z main-character energy to an absolute tee. After supporting Simon Amstell on his UK tour, his Fringe debut, ‘Literally Who Cares?!’ is a tear-jerking hour of straight-up truths. If you see just one show at the Fringe, you must make it this.
Dripping with irony and an alluring narcissism, Reich leads us through his coming out story, his toxic ex and his first forward roll. ‘Like’ is littered after every other word, he casually ‘apologises’ after saying anything mildly offensive (because you can’t be a Gen Z without being scared of getting cancelled), and he breaks out into epic pop songs about ‘being valid’ ‘gaslighting’ and ‘gatekeeping’. Delivered with a delicious campness, he speaks in the language of a generation: it’s so clever, so terrifyingly relatable, and so bloody good.
His digs at straight people (‘I find het anal sex to be performative’) and dark metaphors about reality TV (‘After Love Island, it’s death or sponsorship with Pretty Little Thing’) are roaringly funny: I literally had tears in my eyes. But it’s not all about the main-character energy. There’s an anxious edge that runs through the show, an unspoken anxiety in knowing that, actually, we might all be fucked. But Reich shrugs off the dooming uncertainty about the future with a cute giggle, because our only choice is to bloody get on with it.
Reich doesn’t care about our laughter and swiftly moves onto the next cracker before we’ve even had the chance to catch breath. And the best thing is, he only gets better. He reintroduces plenty of the previous punchlines throughout and his personality gleams as we learn more about his drama-filled life. His main conclusion is that, yes, it’s hard to be young, but it’s better than being old (‘it must suck!’) – and it’s definitely better to be yourself than to be anyone else. Leo, Leo, Leo. May I be your best friend?