Philip Kostelecky: Daddy’s Home

The Stand – Edinburgh Fringe

4 stars.

Philip Kostelecky’s Daddy’s Home is an extraordinarily strong Fringe debut. It’s a casually fun hour that is performed with a kind of boundless energy that does in fact lift the atmosphere in the venue exponentially. 

Throughout the show Kostelecky presents an off-beat and bubbly persona which matches the stream of consciousness that he tends to employ throughout the hour which leads to a seemingly very honest dissection of his identity. Off-beat because despite the extremely positive tone and persona he takes, there is a slight edge. It shows a self-awareness, which is a little shocking to the point of impressiveness that he feels comfortable enough onstage to do this.  The jokes don’t fall into the category of dark humour – his tone carries too much mock outrage at times for this to be the case – but his observationist material presents a very stark and almost grim reality, which does create a dichotomy between Kostelecky’s tone and what he is saying. It’s not unsettling, and in fact adds the comedic potential of Kostelecky’s jokes; it just hangs at the edge of our awareness. He plays to the entire room and makes very universal and intelligent observations in that he manages to take inspiration from a vast degree of sources, and reference it back to his personal experiences in such a way that it can be applicable or easily understood by every member of the audience. There’s an element of physical comedy in Daddy’s Home which he uses to compound and run with a gag to the point where we are left in tears. 

There does seem to be a little bit of a false start in that Kostelecky dives into his more explicit jokes quite early on in the show. It could be a matter of the time slot that he has been given, but to be suddenly thrown headfirst into a deconstruction of connotations around the word ‘daddy’ accompanied by a couple of graphic gestures; well, it’s not particularly ideal, especially considering how early in the hour it is. The problem with the placing of this material is more to do with the fact that that any particular feelings of relaxation or energy quickly dissipate when we feel the joke has gone too far, something which can set the tone for the rest of the hour. To his credit, Kostleecky is aware of our recalcitrance at certain points, and has a knack for bringing the energy within the venue back up when he feels it dip. 

Daddy’s Home is an incredibly strong stand-up hour and a phenomenal debut. Hopefully Kostelecky will become a stalwart on the comedy circuit, if only so that we can be entertained by his humour time and time again. 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo credit: Rebecca Need-Menear