Writer: John Tothill
Something essential happened to the Catholic Church in England in 1517 and John Tothill is at the Edinburgh Fringe to tell you about it. Maybe. In his debut hour, primary school teacher Tothill arrives on stage in animal-print delight, infectiously enthused to be in a basement venue conversing with his patrons.
The show runs a circuitous gamut, but Tothill remains in control of his script and the room throughout. He dips from slice-of-life anecdotes about working with children in a nominatively-Catholic school into historical key points in England’s messy relationship with Christianity. Each story is peppered with asides and cheeky observational connections that only seem to get funnier as the hour goes along.
Tothill cuts a confident figure in his command of the stage and generosity to his audience, all ‘conventionally attractive’ people he’s ‘obsessed with’, and his voice as a comic is preternaturally realised for this debut hour. The pacing does ebb and flow at times and a few jokes could be streamlined to tighten the experience, but time spent luxuriating in silliness is part of the appeal here. Of special note are Tothill’s description of his youth spent studying the clarinet and his ability to tie this thread to another of his theses: the Catholic Church is best represented by the acid techno genre of music.
To sum up the experience, Tothill presents a pitch-perfect poster of his lesson plan, just in case the audience wasn’t jumping from connection to connection as seamlessly as he. A little lift of the curtain to reassure us that none of those detours were totally random, we were in John Tothill’s capable hands all along.
Runs until 27 August 2023 | Image: Contributed
