I’ve heard Scott Gibson’s fringe show – now shortlisted for a best newcomer award – dismissed as “just a good pub story”. Which is hard to argue with. But it’s the kind of pub story for which you’d get the landlord to turn the music down, fetch a new round of drinks and probably crack open the pork scratchings too. Gibson is a 32-year-old Glaswegian with most of the virtues associated with that city’s tone of voice: blunt, cheerfully anti-pretentious and with a real savour for the comedy of life’s unglamorous underside.
Life After Death describes Gibson experience of a brain haemorrhage aged 24. It reels in wonder at the chance moments that saved his life; it draws, without schmaltz, on the expected carpe diem life lessons. But mainly, it’s a vehicle for some very funny stories about Blackpool stag dos, men’s head-in-sand reactions to illness, and the various lurid effronteries of the hospital experience.
We find ourselves, then, in the common comic territory of male carnal indignity – as with Gibson’s resplendent anecdote about being showered by nurses while trying to conceal his erection. The show isn’t about pushing envelopes. But its high stakes revitalise the familiar: we laugh more because all this farcical comedy (pillows stuck to his head with blood; a flatmate making toast instead of rushing him to A&E) happens in the context of terrifying, near-terminal experience. You’ll be aghast, you may writhe (as I did) with squeamishness, but by the time you’ve drained your pint glass, you’ll have been thoroughly entertained.
- At the Gilded Balloon until 29 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
