Brookes' Edinburgh Return: Chewy Comedy, Lower Stakes
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- Jordan Brookes, 2019 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner, debuted "The Part of You That's Always Screaming" at the Pleasance Dome, running until 30 August
- The hour is structured around Brookes eating a croissant on a train while seated between the window and a gazing fellow passenger — a launchpad for questions about selfhood, being watched, and the performative self
- Standalone riffs span pickup artistry, webcam-hacking paranoia, and "the super-strong mother who can lift a car to save her child," described as very droll
- At one unexpected moment, Brookes turns down the lights, layers in a disturbing industrial soundscape, and jerks threateningly across the stage — a flash of the form's rougher edges
- The reviewer argues the set feels "fairly conventional" and never delivers the stunt payoff he expected from the opening routine referencing the early film "Train Pulling Into a Station"
- Even so, the reviewer concedes that recalibrating expectations to "spiky and interrogative comedy" still leaves the audience amply rewarded — though Brookes' fans, the piece argues, have been "trained to expect more"
Why it matters: Brookes' 2019 Edinburgh Comedy Award win set a self-imposed bar: every new hour now gets measured against his earlier reputation for shape-shifting ambition, so even an admiring review that calls the show "twisty and deep-thinking" can read as a comedown simply because it isn't transcendent.
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