Colchester Fringe Festival 2026
Who Remembers the 90s
Adam Larter
Genre: Clown, Comedy, Stand-Up
Venue: Three Wise Monkeys
Festival: Colchester Fringe Festival
Low Down
Who Remembers the 90’s is not a question, but a pun. Adam Larter’s comedy show is indescribable, hilarious, and bewildering, but your enjoyment is dependent on the question: “Do you remember the 90s?”
Review
The challenge with this show, as I was worried about before attending this show, is that I was not born in the 90s. I, by virtue of being born in America in the new millennium, do not remember the British 90s beyond the little bits of VHS tapes and hand-me-down toys. Adam Larter’s Who Remembers the 90s is a nostalgia trip down dial-up internet, Tamagotchi toys, Power Rangers, Sonic, New Labour, and Teletubbies (all set to parody renditions of Who songs) meant for a target audience (and reviewer) who understands all these references.
So how do I review something in which I am clearly NOT the target audience? By doing my best to break it all down with my unfortunate bias of being born in a different millennium…
Different millennium or not, Adam Larter is a high-energy mad-cap comedian. He excels at the cringe clown type of humor, pushing forward at a relentless pace and with commitment to his bits. He crawls through the audience, throws things, changes costumes, and juggles literally hundreds of cardboard props. It is an uncontrollable clowning parade of Weird Al-esque Who parody songs about the nineties. There is never a moment to breathe, which with this style of clowning works to the show’s favor. Special mention must be made of those hundreds of cardboard props. A sane person would have just made a PowerPoint image collection. Yet, Adam Larter is no sane person (he did grow up watching Space Jam in the 90s after all). The cardboard props, lovingly DIY-crafted, rival fringe favorites Theatre Group GUMBO for the most number of handmade props used during a fringe show. There is a craftsmanship to Larter’s performance and props. In-show, each new prop and joke is presented with the freshness of still-drying acrylic paint. In reality, I imagine Larter spent weeks, if not months, preparing each little detail. That is the absurdist messy clown standup and craft I expect from the fringe.
Adam Larter in Who Remembers the 90s is a lot like watching a drunk dad at 4 A.M. in your local pub hijacking the karaoke machine to only play Who songs. He will continue, in all his feralness and shirtlessness, until the bar kicks him out or the cops show up. If that sounds appealing, as it was often for me, you will love the humor and style of this show.
Who Remembers the 90s title is a pun (because all the parody songs are Who songs). Yet, I wish that question was asked and considered more in the making of this show. To appreciate the jokes, you have to have the connection to the references being made. Failing that, there is little depth to this insanity.
What frustrates me about Who Remembers the 90s is that it is inaccessible to those who do not understand its 90s British references. Which, sure, is bad on me to come to the show called Who Remembers the 90s knowing I do not know anything about the 90s. But I wish, despite that, I could get more from the work. With other nostalgia-focused or educational shows I’ve seen, it’s been a bonus to know a lot about the material or genre, not essential as it is here. Having no connection to the material and watching this show is akin to going on your toddler’s brainrot “For You” TikTok page and trying to make sense of Gen Alpha pop culture. You’ll just be left bewildered (but you must admit that dancing banana is still fun to watch).
Simply put: if you’re not of the era, you won’t get it. If the show had more depth beyond its parody numbers, perhaps exploring the effects of nostalgia and our desire for it, then this would not be an issue. But because it is simply a good-time silly childhood nostalgia trip, it leaves the non-nostalgic left behind. The few bits exploring nineties neoliberal politics, and not TV shows and toys, were not the cutting examination they could have been. Beyond the question “Remember the nineties?”, there is not a ton of thematic exploration. Does a show like this need depth to work? No, only if it wants maximum accessibility, not just references and parody. Even if it lacks depth, Larter’s performance is still so high-energy you can still get behind the WTF-nature of it all.
It was clear, from the laughter through the theatre, that the audience was enjoying the humor on offer. The ladies behind me kept gleefully remarking at all the references they knew: “Oh! I remember that!” The audience played along with the interactive bits, the sing-along, and cried out for an encore. Speaking to some audience members of the era afterwards, the reviews were mixed, from ecstatic nostalgia to frustration at not understanding all the jokes. “I remember the nineties, but in America, so most of that went over my head,” one audience member said to me. Let me emphasize again: I was laughing throughout because Adam Larter is funny and well worth your time. He was funny despite me not knowing what was happening. This was not the cultural language I understood. His material here did not work, nor was meant, for me.
So with all this in mind, let me ask you:
- Are you British?
- Did you grow up during the 90s?
- Are you particularly nostalgic for the era?
- Do you like high-energy, prop-fueled, clowning?
- Do you like parody songs of The Who?
The number of yeses you gave will determine how much you get out of the show. Only one of those aligned with me, so my review is more mixed. Nonetheless, Adam Larter is an energetic comedian. I hope he does the sequel late-00s show so I can get as much joy out of it as much of the audience got out of remembering the 90s tonight.
