Phil Wang made a little piece of fringe history this year before the festival even began, when he sold out in advance his entire run in the Pleasance’s Cabaret bar. You can see why he’s popular: the new show – his first since 2017’s terrific Kinabalu – is high-end standup with excellent jokes, new perspectives and a distinctive persona. It’s very easy to admire, albeit a little harder to love than some of his previous offerings.
Why so? It’s partly that he’s more alpha than he used to be, with a new no-messing, harder-nosed attitude. Hitherto, there was an amusing tension between his shtick, which involved faux self-love and glorifying himself archly in the third person (witness current show title, Philly Philly Wang Wang), and the evidence of our eyes, that he was a charming nerd. There is less tension now, as he tells us how focused he is on becoming rich, and warns us not to expect comedians – least of all Phil Wang – to be good people.
Of course, this is all just for laughs. And he gets plenty of them. There’s a great early routine about his dual white and Asian identity (“Lucky Wang’s rolled two sixes over here!”), a strong bit on contraception across the gender divide and choice one-liners across the board (“Have you ever done a fart so bad you lost a bar of wifi?”). Weak moments are few, and include a riff on sporting events as proxy “race wars” (a bit of a stretch) and a not exactly cutting-edge takedown of Popeye. There are also grownup reflections on how the sexes are judged differently for the same behaviour, and on the anxiety surrounding comedy foreign accents.
I liked it a lot, and may even have loved it were it not for a slight cynicism (ironic or otherwise) that has crept into Wang’s demeanour, and a certain air of detachment from his material. He’s not quite the equable, lovable fellow of previous shows. But Philly Philly Wang Wang remains a strong offering, and very few of those early-bird bookers will leave disappointed.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
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