Comedy is a difficult thing to review.
What one person finds absolutely hilarious can leave somebody else completely unmoved. Humour is incredibly subjective, so when reviewing comedy I tend to look beyond simply asking, “Did I laugh?”
Are the jokes delivered with confidence? Does the comedian command the room? Does the material flow? And, perhaps most importantly, is the audience enjoying themselves?
Before we get into Amy Matthews: Definitions Of Toast, however, I have a confession to make.
I was five minutes late.
A cardinal sin when reviewing.
Entirely my fault too – I got the times wrong and, once I realised, hot-footed it to the venue as quickly as possible.
So apologies, Amy. I promise I wasn’t making a dramatic entrance.
Thankfully, once I’d slipped into the room, it didn’t take long to get a feel for the show.
Amy Matthews presents herself confidently on stage and has a polished set which moves from joke to joke and anecdote to anecdote with considerable ease.
Her material explores different aspects of her life, relationships and exes, with Amy frequently turning the comedy back onto herself. There’s a self-deprecating quality to parts of her humour which helps build a rapport with the audience and makes the whole thing feel wonderfully relatable.
Rather than presenting herself as someone standing on stage with all the answers, there’s a feeling that Amy is inviting us into her slightly way of looking at the world due her autism
And the audience clearly enjoyed being there.
There was plenty of laughter throughout the performance, followed by a huge round of applause at the end.
Interestingly, there isn’t a huge amount of audience interaction.
And I was perfectly happy about that.
Not every comedy show needs to involve somebody in the front row spending an hour desperately avoiding eye contact in case they become the next target.
Definitions Of Toast isn’t that kind of comedy.
There is no sense that you’re about to be dragged unwillingly into proceedings or roasted because you made the catastrophic mistake of sitting too close to the stage. Instead, you can relax and allow Amy to do the work.
The show flows naturally from one anecdote into another, and Amy is very good at finding comedy in the seemingly ordinary details of life.
Although I did leave with one particularly important lesson:
Don’t leave a rucksack on the seat next to you in a train carriage.
You’ll understand.
There is an appealing dryness to Amy’s delivery too. She doesn’t need to desperately chase every laugh, and that confidence allows some of the jokes to breathe.
That’s an important quality in stand-up. Sometimes the funniest performer in the room isn’t necessarily the loudest one.
Amy also knows how to make herself part of the joke. Her self-deprecating humour makes her feel accessible, and there’s something comforting about spending an hour with a comedian who isn’t trying to make the audience uncomfortable simply for the sake of generating material.
Instead, Definitions Of Toast feels like sitting down with somebody who has accumulated a collection of funny, strange and occasionally questionable life experiences and decided to tell you about them.
Which, when you think about it, is basically what good stand-up should be.
This is a perfect Fringe show for those moments when you’ve spent the day running between venues, climbing Edinburgh’s seemingly endless hills and simply want to sit down, relax and have a good laugh.
Amy Matthews is confident, polished and relatable, with a set that flows easily and an audience that was clearly very happy to have spent an hour in her company.
Overall, a very good comedy show and one I’d happily recommend.
★★★★ 4 Stars – Let’s Raise a TOAST to this one.
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