I’ve just spent a week as a critic at the Edinburgh Fringe, and there’s excitement in the air that’s got nothing to do with stand-up comedy.
Story-telling stand-up is about to be toppled off its live comedy throne after decades of domination by a genre that’s about to explode: character comedy.
For the purposes of this article, by stand-up comedy I mean when a person tells anecdotes and makes jokes on stage as themselves, if not a slightly heightened version of them; think the likes of Katherine Ryan, Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay, and pretty much all the biggest household names in British comedy.
Character comedy, on the other hand, is when a comedian plays a character that is more than just an amplified version of themselves. Instead, they are embodying an alter-ego or someone completely different.
On TV, character comedians have already boomed, of course, with Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, Diane Morgan’s Philomena Cunk and all the sitcom characters in between, like Lolly Adefope’s many faces, not to mention Mr Bean.
But in the live comedy world, this alternative scene is fizzing with unexploded talent.
Last year, character comedian Joe Kent-Walters sold out his Edinburgh Fringe run with his disturbing but hilarious alter-ego Frankie Monroe and with buckets of five-star reviews won best newcomer at the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Awards.
This year, character comedian Lorna Rose Treen’s 24 Hour Diner People is one of this year’s most-hyped Fringe shows.
Just a week in and Lorna’s hour was fully sold out, and she’s even bagged herself a run at Soho Theatre in September: a spot that’s every Edinburgh Fringe comedian’s dream.
Lorna Rose Treen: 24 Hour Diner People review -★★★½
24 Hour Diner people is a delightfully daft romp into Lorna’s bonkers imagination, with a satisfying structure and plenty of laughs. It introduces characters in an American diner – a long-armed trucker, a horny teenager, and a heist plotter – with chaotic momentum and clever transitions.
While Lorna’s characters are brilliantly ticklish, some lack specificity and depth that would transition this show from appreciative laughs into belly-cackle territory.
Nevertheless, I can’t wait to see what Lorna does next. She’s an absolute hoot, and 24 Hour Diner People is an exciting example of what can happen when comedians aren’t afraid to experiment and run with their wildest dreams.
‘I’ve only been going for three and a half years… I think part of my early success was because I was doing something so different,’ Lorna says in a pre-Fringe chat with Metro.
She too is convinced character comedy is having a moment.
‘I’m really excited to see so much character comedy coming back and bubbling up,’ Lorna says, pointing to the new Soho Theatre Character Comedy Development Lab, which has been set up to hone acts on the circuit.
‘It’s been really cool to have that place for people to start off. Because when I was starting, I didn’t really have anywhere to go,’ she says.
Lorna reckons outside the clowning and drag world – of which there are many weird and wonderful characters to behold – there are just around 30 character comedians of her generation on the UK circuit right now.
‘It’s harder to fill a lineup with character comics,’ Archie Henderson-Cleland, who you may know as his alter-ego Jazz Emu, agrees in a chat with us, while pondering why character comedians have lagged behind stand-ups in live spaces.
Character comedians have a hard time cutting their teeth
But the industry is gagging for character comedy, even if audiences haven’t quite caught up with it.
‘Characters are still the alternative at the Fringe, but quite often they’ve been the ones that have gone on to make a really successful sitcom,’ Archie says.
Lorna agrees: ‘In the last three years, the TV industry has now said they only want laugh-out-loud comedy [as opposed to comedy dramas]. So that’s great, because that’s really turned in my favour.’
Rory Marshall is a relative newbie on the scene, having started posting skits in character online during lockdown. He didn’t know anyone in the comedy industry, but when producers got in touch, Rory thought he’d give live shows a whirl at The Moth Club in Hackney.
Rory Marshall: Pathetic Little Characters review – ★★★★★
Rory Marshall is making his Edinburgh Fringe debut with the brilliant Pathetic Little Characters. The expert hour sees Rory embody a number of everyday men – all of which had the crowd roaring in recognition.
With the stage presence of a seasoned pro, Rory delivers male characters we’ve all met, but have never deeply thought about until now.
Through an hour of surprising comedy – I laughed so loud it was almost embarrassing – he dissects these Pathetic Little Characters and stitches them back together with genius precision.
Although he perhaps didn’t mean them to be, Rory’s characters are also a vital and satisfying study into the male psyche and its flaws – some sympathetic, some not so much – which he invites everyone to laugh at with Partridge-esque gusto.
We should all be keeping a very close eye on Rory Marshall – because he’s about to blow up.
Rory was ‘really nervous’ about doing his characters on stage for the first time, but found The Moth Club a welcoming space with a comedy-tuned audience.
But when he tried a regular stand-up comedy gig, things didn’t work out quite so well.
‘I did this bit in character and there was not one laugh. It was 10 minutes to go, and I was thinking, “What on earth am I going to do here?”‘ Rory remembers.
Archie agrees. He did a lot of stand-up comedy gigs as Jazz Emu in character and it was ‘much harder’ than at alternative nights – which I’m told ‘come and go’ (they tend to blaze bright and die soon after of financial stress). Now he only performs at the more left-field nights.
The world is heavy and character comedy is the answer
‘I love silliness, and I love escapism. I love all this stuff. And I actually think it’s really nice for people to have some distraction when everything is very heavy,’ says Archie, while acknowledging this is a privileged position to be in.
While character comedy can be pure daftness, it’s also another way in to talk about and highlight important issues, albeit less obviously so than a comedian telling jokes about their trauma on stage.
‘I think it’s such a miserable time in the world,’ says Lorna. ‘It’s hard to be a woman in comedy. It’s hard to be a woman doing anything really, especially right now.
‘That’s where I feel like my power is, to be a woman making absurd stuff feels quite political.’
For Rory, whose characters nail little quirks I didn’t identify in men before I saw him perform them, he is not actively trying to be political. But exploring masculinity in any form in 2025 kind of… is.
‘When you see a man who is uncomfortable in a situation, I find it fascinating to look at how he feels, or how he’s perceived, and then how that makes him act,’ he explains.
The Fringe is becoming a tense place – and character comedians are truly playing
What makes character comedians so exciting in 2025 isn’t any political or social trend they are peddling, though. It’s simply that these performers are endlessly creative and bold enough to commit to ‘the bit’ – however left-field.
‘Character comedians are so creative in the way they’re like, “I’m going to try this, which I wrote yesterday. I have very little faith in it. It’s quite daring, quite sort of risky,”‘ observes Rory.
In terms of looking for their – deep breath, ‘big break’ – character comedians are navigating a wilder, less-trodden path than stand-up comedians. And that’s sort of freeing.
With the Edinburgh Fringe comes huge pressures for stand-up comedians, who are known to have been made and broken on its cobbled streets. This long history mounts pressure onto each joke, moment and show. There’s less room for risk-taking for young comics.
‘I think there’s more trust in the process and the craziness of it with character comedy,’ Rory says. ‘It’s at the back of everyone’s mind that there could be a casting person in the audience or something. But I think the thing I’ve noticed is that there’s just a love for the creativity of it.’
While Archie was nervous to become eccentric, annoying Jazz on stage, he had to do it.
‘There are still people that find it annoying and cartoony,’ laughs Jazz. ‘But this is what I would want to watch, so I thought I’ll just do that.’
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