In the run-up to the Fringe, Andy Barr took a moment to answer some questions from Pepper&Salt about The Hotly-Anticipated 4th Debut Hour from Rising Star, Andy Barr, his new show. This hotly anticipated interview covers Barr’s new show, character comedy and what it is like to procrastinate your Edinburgh Fringe debut.
How would you summarise your show?
I’d say that this is a show that was about grief, but now that I’m over it, is about delivering 40 minutes of quality material to try and find a meaning.
What is the secondary-title of this show?
A couple of titles were in the running:
- It’s My Round
- Apples (a central theme in the show)
- Scrumping for Meaning (see above)
- Breakout Show (considered too much of an in for a reviewer looking to be nasty)
- Sunlit Wastelands
What were your previous three debuts about?
The previous three debuts character shows – each about characters with my name, but crucially, they were all different. The Andy Barr of the first show (Tropic of Admin, 2017) was an administrator trapped on a desert island who does the only thing he knows how – institutes procedures, draws up forms, produces handbooks etc.
The second debut Andy Barr (Neustadt, 2018) was an architect and cold war double agent, approached by the Soviets to design the perfect socialist city.
The third Andy Barr (The Ruby, 2019) was a minor aristocrat inheriting his father’s cursed ruby on the occasion of his 30th birthday. I also explored several other members of a fictional Barr lineage, exploring aspects of society which feel like they are part and parcel of the modern British man (racism, complicity in climate apocalypse, sexism). This one was the first show where I felt I was actually trying to say something. Sadly no-one saw it.
How does this hour fit in with your other debuts?
Spiritually, I feel that this one has a good deal in common with The Ruby. They’ve both been cooked up in the same climate of pervasive dread and malaise (it’s funny, honestly – really good), although naturally the events of the last six years have compounded all this. Although I’m finally being myself*, I feel that I’ve taken a little bit of the anarchy, staging and visuals from all of the other shows.
”Well, the joke is on you – I was phoning it in.“
How does it feel to finally be making your debut?
Great! It’s nice to finally have the confidence to be a version of myself that is somewhere close to being honest and capable of being up front about my opinions and feelings. There’s only so long you can hide behind some wafer-thin cloak of ironic ‘character’ work. I’m ready, come and see me at last – not those other guys I was pretending to be!
I think people should come to the show – it’s my big debut, it’s in a wonderful room AND, if nothing else, contains what could be two of the shittest needle drops of the entire festival!
What has led you to delay/ procrastinate your debut for so long?
Fear of fully trying, fear of being seen and known – can’t fail if you’re not giving it your all. Oh, you didn’t like it? Well, the joke is on you – I was phoning it in.
How do the subjects that you explore in this show link together?
I cover a number of seemingly disparate topics over the course of the hour, but they are all united by a sense of personal and/or societal decline. A process which I, loftily (or perhaps desperately), hope to arrest through the act of making and performing the show. Go big or go home.
What is your favourite pun?
Possibly not my favourite, but the first I came up with:
My uncle moves in Strange Ways. He’s a prison inspector.
How do you forget to debut?
You write three character shows in three years which don’t allow you to cull any material from them to gig around clubs, because none of it works shorn of context, and then, 15 years after starting to perform you finally realise it’s time to shit or get off the pot.
What kind of character comedy do you do?
The sort where the costume does the majority of the heavy lifting. I am not much of an actor.
Favourite character that you have created?
I think it would be Alastair Bridge, a bigoted travel journalist who started a podcast during lockdown (all episodes of which can be found on my Youtube). Alastair also had his own live show which debuted at Leicester Comedy Festival in which he is assassinated at the end by a Manchurian Candidate, placed in the audience by the arms manufacturer for whom Alastair is shilling. If I ever get a sniff of a Radio 4 commission, I’d like to revisit him.
What is your preferred medium for comedy?
Live performance is my favourite kind of comedy. There’s just that little extra edge to it. I can enjoy televised comedy, but it lacks those real moments of release you get from being in a room full of people all enjoying someone doing something risky (and well) right in front of you.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Michael Julings
Pepper & Salt 
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