Writer: Mark Vigeant
Director: Joanna Simmons
Winner of Best Comedy at the 2024 Hollywood Fringe, The Best Man Show sees Mark Vigeant give a solo performance that define the phrases Tour-de-Force and comedy masterclass.
He’s in town for a wedding reception, but it’s no ordinary wedding reception. His brother Paul is getting married for the second time. His first wife is not only also in attendance, but she’s also still his wife. It’s a polyamorous commitment ceremony and it’s being held in a weird looking classroom in Edinburgh.
Setting the show in the city immediately draws the audience in to the absurd spectacle. They are guests at the wedding, not people watching a show about a wedding. As the Best Man, Vigeant is initially loud and brash as he disses the location, hippy vibes and guests in a phone call to someone back home. You know from this opening that this is not going to just be the normal embarrassing best man speech, there are going to be a lot of things unpacked and bitterness exposed in a ‘can’t help myself and don’t know if I want to’ kind of way.
Drawing the audience further into the show, he chats to the guests asking them questions about how they know his brother and what they think about his marital set-up, before introducing us to Paul, his two wives and other members of the family who had no idea they were related to him until he tells them they are.
This isn’t done with the aim of making them the subject of his jokes. Vigeant already has a superbly scripted show, he doesn’t need other people to make the gags for him, instead it is done to draw us further in to the show, not just breaking the fourth wall but relocating it to somewhere outside the venue.
Vigeant trades on recognisable tropes such as sibling rivalries, emotional parents, and failed ambitions, but ramps each of them up as the desire to impress his brother and be the best man he could be falls victim to an identity crisis fuelled by alcohol, toxic masculinity and his own sense of inadequacy, but only after a best man solo dance that reduces Ricky Gervais’s Office routine to a slightly embarrassing dad dance in comparison.
Joanna Simmons direction brings out the best in both Vigeant’s script and performance. The comic timing and delivery is superb throughout with the manic energy of the Best Man always underpinned by his desire to do a great job and the self-fulfilling fear that he might let his brother and himself down. It’s easy to see why this show is already winning awards and accolades, and why it should go on to win more.
Runs until 25 August 2024 | Image: Contributed
