Having directly addressed his drug addiction in his last show, John Mulaney makes only wry, passing reference to it in Mister Whatever. However, this includes the inherently funny disclosure that this vulnerable multi-millionaire and provider for a big extended family is only allowed to carry $200 in his wallet by his wife and the bank cashiers who must abide by her wishes.
So when Mulaney sardonically snarls at one point that he’s “not such a good guy, everyone knows that now”, the sense of freedom he’s conveying at five years sober is palpable. The American stand-up’s observational and storytelling skill is as keen as ever. But he can truly explore and revel in his insouciance and meanness now.
Without any big issues such as substance abuse to address, he’s dismissive about concerns about the state of the US, and by implication, the world, just because he doesn’t think he and his compatriots have the will or energy for true, sustained fascism.
Donald Trump’s dictatorial impulses aren’t a sign of a malevolent superpower but the comic’s own laissez-faire indifference extrapolated across the wider US public. Sure, things are bad but they’ve always been really. What’s the worst that could happen?
If not sympathy for the Devil, he can certainly muster tolerance and empathy. With a particularly dark twist on the “kids say the funniest things” shtick of a new-ish father, he shares the creepy sayings of his son, the toddler’s otherworldly precociousness recalling the comic’s early stand-up, when his world-weariness and cynicism belied his youthful, clean-cut appearance.
Now, we all know that outward preppiness was something of a lie. And Mulaney blazes with diabolic glee at how he filled the party bags at his son’s birthday party with dubiously appropriate items, teaching the children some life lessons and visiting cruelty on their blameless parents.
In one child’s raspy gratitude, he hears an echo of the US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose crank views he demolishes with precious little exaggeration and barely breaking sweat. His disdainful sarcasm and twisted delight in the re-emergence of bygone and suddenly resurgent diseases is matched only by the pearl clutching he affects at the Trump administration’s foreign policy, with America having hitherto been a bastion of benevolence towards the rest of the world he deadpans, ladling the insincerity on thick.
Although it touches on his childhood Catholicism, and an addiction psychiatrist might have a field day with it, the show’s centrepiece routine is purely his niche interest. And he drills into it with the same clarity of focus and obsessiveness as the autistic traits he attributes to his older male relatives.
An avid consumer of horror films about Satanic possession, he’s seen them all. And he has a few notes about the Devil’s foul-mouthed but ambition-lacking evil. Possessed by his own sweariest, worst instincts, being naughty for naughty’s sake like a South Park character or the lapsed altar boy he is, Mulaney’s clearly having abundant fun in this section, teasing the Antichrist for going half-cocked. He surfs the energy of the narrowly focused and lengthy routine, knowing just when to interject a witty aside amidst the torrent of filth.
Appearing in Scotland for the first time, he displays some ignorance of the prevalence of Catholicism in Glasgow and issues of sectarianism tension. But he’s already blithely disclaimed that he will be making zero concessions to tweaking his cultural references. And he’s enjoyably graceless slamming lesser American comics who clog up the Edinburgh Fringe.
His clear commitment to mischief over straight nastiness and his well-documented personal struggles are significant factors in how he pulls off depicting his wife’s Vietnamese family as a cabal of hustlers rinsing him for every dollar. Mimicking them with sing-song rascality, it’s his delicate skill in reinforcing how he’s the fall-guy in every one of their interactions that makes this a superior, contemporary and culturally aware mother-in-law routine that yet has broad appeal.
There’s also something classic and old-fashioned in his closing bit, contrasting his top of the line, ineffective washer-dryer with the loud, terrifying but far more capable equivalent of his childhood. Generally wholesome and with a certain wallowing in nostalgia, you might imagine Michael McIntyre performing something similar.
Except that is, in the old appliance’s eager, military-style devotion to duty that he ascribes to it and the black site, behind a closed lid way that it went about its dirty, punishing business, Mulaney makes a sly nod to the US foreign policy he claims to be blasé about. Obviously, there’s never been a golden era to make great again, nostalgia is comforting deception and he truly enjoys reminding you of that.
Tours until 21 November 2026 | Image: Contributed
