Daniel Sloss, as he is happy to admit, is only a part-timer at this year\u2019s Fringe. Just a couple of dates, but when you\u2019re filling out the Edinburgh Playhouse (\u201cthe largest seated theatre in the UK\u201d the Fringe entry tells us) each time maybe that\u2019s all you need.<\/p>\n
Sloss calls himself a \u201cZ list\u201d Scottish celebrity this evening, but it\u2019s fair to say he has probably moved beyond the need to do a full Edinburgh run these days. He sets off on a tour of Europe next month with Bitter. It\u2019s been a show that he\u2019s been touring for a while, though tonight we have the added bonus of having Catherine King signing at the side of the stage (she\u2019s been signing for him since his second show). As a result, the audience now know how to sign the words for the worst swear words in BSL.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sloss is, it\u2019s fair to say, a Marmite comedian. There are those who see his outrageous self-confidence as arrogance, the bulletproof certainty of his opinions – the kind of certainty you normally only get in teenagers and newspaper columnists\u00a0 – a sign of self-regard, as is the wilful need to be provocative, to keep saying the unsayable, again and again.<\/p>\n
Sloss is certainly not lacking in self-belief – it\u2019s part of the attraction for his audience – but there\u2019s more going on here than mere self-indulgence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The provocation is a form of play. It\u2019s Sloss seeing where the line is, stepping over it, then pointing out why, in fact, he hasn\u2019t by deconstructing what he\u2019s just done and then stepping over the line anyway. His pleasure in the technicalities of comedy, in exploiting its hot-button possibilities is high-end performance.<\/p>\n
That said, in some ways you could cast Bitter as a holding operation. It sees him circle back to a couple of his previous concerns: break-ups (the subject of his 2018 Netflix special Jigsaw), and Russell Brand. There\u2019s a central routine about why he agreed to appear on the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary investigating allegations of abuse against Brand, one that culminates – delightfully – on a ferry crossing from Stornoway the day after the broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an example that Sloss\u2019s best comedy has always drawn from his life rather than his opinions, as is his account of how he ended up marrying the sister of a former girlfriend tonight.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s final routine is very Slossian in its flouting of any ideas of taste, a reminder that even at the age of 36 that precocious, wanting-to-shock teenager he was is never that far away. It\u2019s also a reminder that it\u2019s possible to be slightly appalled and amused at the same time.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s why in the end Bitter is less a holding operation, more a reminder that Sloss is a tightrope walker, balancing at a giddy height. We watch to see if he will fall. But the truth is, he looks very much at home up there.<\/p>\n