Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Low Down
Brooklyn-based comedian Louis Katz’s Fringe debut Bountiful “showcases his trademark blend of highbrow and lowbrow humour.” A satisfied audience were treated to some sharp observation that isn’t afraid to go deep and controversial whist remaining a genial hour in the company of an assured raconteur comedian.
Review
Louis Katz is on top of his material and his audience from the first moment as the frenzied announcer introduces our host and turns out to be … This review does not contain spoilers. What we have here is an hour on the Free Fringe that had most of the audience more than happy to tip a decent whack on the way out of the venue.
Sometimes up close and personal, with vignettes from his family life, Louis Katz also plunges skilfully into world politics and achieves a safe yet impactful path through. The philosophical under-narrative bubbles to the surface, and many in the audience nod at the destructive nature of living in a polarised, binary world. We need to get off the line of ones and zeros, or either-or, and embrace the more telling and genuine ambiguity that we know forms our daily lives of family, work, and just getting through life.
The show is never preachy, though, and we are often presented with a pay-off line that delivers a decent gag but also gets us pondering. So, it’s an intelligent hour, but never departs too far from a good old comedy hour with a master stand-up. Storyteller, idea deliverer, we get the conundrums of life and plenty of audience banter that is never cruel and keeps us leaning in. From a Jewish family, the references are actually more universal about all families. If the occasionally US-based references elude some in the audience, the vast majority of the humour is universally accessible.
Katz holds the space with ease and keeps the ideas and vignettes coming. The venue was the right size for an intimate feel to the show, and the variety of the material kept it interesting, engaging, insightful, and never less than high-grade funny.
Louis Katz is new to the Fringe, bringing a bigger reputation from his homeland, the USA. He was enjoying the hour too, and that is a shared experience with this audience. I think, and hope, we see more of this intelligent, witty, sharply satirical, and laugh-inducing comedian at the Fringe.
