Josh Howie: I Am A Dick

Josh Howie opens with the disclaimer that he is a dick. This immediately becomes self-evident from the titling dispute he endured with the Fringe office and the fact he’s allowed press into an early afternoon preview without fully comprehending how to convey his wince-inducing subject matter.

Relentless in his dispassion and privileging the crafting of a gag over sensitivities, this particular hour became a war of attrition in which he bounced between racism, rape and 9/11 while the audience rarely stopped shuffling uncomfortably in their seats. He possesses a number of first-rate, quotable lines in his set and the notion of rating his various misdemeanours on a sliding scale from dickishness to arseholedom has obvious self-deprecating potential – though, tellingly, many in the crowd failed to give the process any consideration.

By requesting individual audience members deliver the rating, he directly engages them and makes them complicit in his grim setlist, something that for the most part they recoil from. He may yet succeed in this high-wire act however, if he becomes less clinical in his execution and a more playful salesman of his persona – or simply as gifted as Jerry Sadowitz in being as funny as he aspires to be outrageous.

Yet the self-destructive lure of fulfilling his dick vocation by being a clever one seems too attractive for Howie. He’s created a thematically perfect hour, but it is only sporadically funny. And the alienating subject matter can’t disguise the fact that some of the routines are too unfocused and rambling regardless.