Brennan Reece: Everglow

Brennan Reece is a bit of a conman. He starts his Fringe debut shouting, "Right, who's up for an hour of jokes?!” followed by some cheeky audience banter and Jongleurs-ready one-liners. By the end, he's performing a highly theatrical, emotionally compelling monologue about family, gender fluidity and modern sexuality. How did that happen?

For starters, Reece is more interesting than he lets on. Presenting as one of the lads, he soon dissects his own sexual identity (which he refuses to classify) and masculinity (anything but laddish). He builds a tapestry of jokes around stereotypes—men, women, straight, gay—only to pull back and question his own reaction to them.

He focuses on his family, who mean a huge amount to him as a refuge from the scary adult world. Stories of bullying at school, including the occasion he unwisely announced to his class that when he grew up he wanted to be a woman, are both moving and hysterically funny.

The show's politics are buried deep, sneaking up beneath a tapestry of whimsical, ribald and raucous stories. At heart, it seems to ask how we reconcile the emotional value of a traditional nuclear family with modern values about gender and sexuality. Reece wants both, and by the bittersweet end you'll just about believe a new generation could achieve it.

Energetic, joyfully performed and impeccably structured—with unmistakable influences of Daniel Kitson and Simon Amstell—Everglow should see Reece in serious consideration for Best Newcomer.