Edinburgh Fringe 2025
15:10 To Yuma
Clayton Smith
Genre: Comedy, Solo Show, Stand-Up, Storytelling
Venue: Just the Tonic at The Subway @ Just the Tonic Legends
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
American comedian Clayton Smith explores his upbringing in Yuma, Arizona: home to a Wild West prison, made famous by a certain film. But it’s so much more than a Hollywood footnote, it’s a vibrant community full of criminals, sociopathic sports coaches and lots of guns! Clayton explores all the formative people and experiences that made him: from his first heartbreak to his first experience working with gangsters. 15:10 to Yuma is a show about love, masculinity and the guns that Jesus would own.
Review
In the dark, cavernous space of The Subway bar on the Cowgate, played in by Frankie Laine’s The 3.10 to Yuma from the 1957 Western of the same name, at ten minutes past three on the dot Clayton Smith tells us about growing up in the hottest place in the United States. As a redhead, no less. He paints a picture of Yuma, famous for its notorious prison – the school held the kids’ lessons there at one point – and the word now a Cuban slang term for the U.S.A (he explains). Smith’s got great stories, the strong sense of place leaving him free to talk as personally as family or as nationally as gun laws. This hour moves between storytelling with jokes and stand-up, he’s got a lovely line in impressions, and his film major background works its way in with some script work that opens the door for a little meta-comedy to close things out.
Smith does all elements ably but the shift between them can sometimes feel abrupt. Some of the strongest sections are storytelling – childhood yo-yo’s, his terrifying sports coach, that feeling of discovering more within yourself through falling in love and the heartbreak and shut down that follows – and the injections of punchline can at times compete for space. There are, nevertheless, great jokes delivered in a casual throwaway style – he is not afraid of the occasional pun, some light one-liners that land, callbacks are very enjoyable, and there’s some lovely interaction with the audience. His proximity to criminality follows him to New York where he sketches an off-Broadway theatre gangster, the reputation of any given New York City mayor, and riffs on his own family’s links to the nicest mafia in existence (the Canadian mafia). He walks a great line in not delivering false justice/happy endings and his structure keeps the comedy coming, comfortably placing lightness alongside darker or more heartfelt themes.
This reviewer would have loved the hour to stay in Yuma as a tighter structure, to use the location and themes created by the proximity to the prison more. My audience doesn’t know 3.10 to Yuma and Smith wonders aloud whether it isn’t such a good pun without knowledge of the reference. I like the device without having seen the movie and would have loved to hear more about it (Smith loves westerns), to know when he first saw it or what it meant for his town. An exploration of masculinity and culture in modern day, small-city America could be fascinating and is hinted at, waiting to be further elucidated. As is full use of his film studies degree – it would be great to see him run with the meta-comedy thread he picks up. The film, its gravelly wild west song that plays us in, and scheduling himself at 3.10 is a really cool idea, Smith should trust the audience to see it too. In its current form, all parts of this hour are thoroughly enjoyable but jostling for space, at times diminishing rather than enhancing each other as they could. This is an engaging, personable show and a great introduction to what Clayton Smith can do
