★★★★★
It’s incredible that Graham Kay is not in a bigger venue at this year’s Fringe for his show Pete & Me. Instead, he took to the rudimentary stage of a “temporary wooden box” in the Gilded Balloon’s Patter Hoose on Chambers Street. But, Kay insisted, the audience of his show was kept to the first four rows of the room as a fire safety precaution.
Greeting members of the audience individually following a presentation of pictures with his family, we’re given an insight into what’s in store for the next hour: wholesome comedy about his family without any big gimmicks. But as his set unfolds, we see there is so much more than that. We’re taken on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster of side-splitting anecdotes, but also points provoking poignant reflection.
The crux of Kay’s show is about his relationship with his family and seeing life through the eyes of brother, Pete, who has autism. Kay describes his brother’s various special interests including the Power Rangers. We see Kay contend with the political incorrectness of the popular children’s television show, and watching to continue to bond with his brother.
While Kay provides these laugh-out-loud anecdotes with witty punchlines and clever callbacks, his show is also refreshingly honest and reflective. During lockdown, Kay and his brother started roleplaying as Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street to get through the long days, and after nearly five years, they continue it. His impression of the vintage characters was a big highlight of the show, delivering some of the biggest laughs.
His observations about his brother’s problematic Apu from The Simpsons impression provoke a sense of reflection in the audience and how we relate to people with autism.
But the part of the show that caused me to laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe was when Kay told the story about Pete’s fish tank. “My brother, we gave him a fish tank because we thought it might be good for him to take care of fish,” he tells the audience “but it’s way more involved than what we thought, there’s like water pumps and filters, so basically he owns a swamp. He puts the fish in there and they’re like ‘What the f*** is this?’ and then they die.”
Kay tells the audience Pete has become a regular at the pet shop in Ottawa and has become the “angel of death”.
“No he doesn’t wear a cloak and sickle, he wears a tucked in Spiderman t-shirt!”
One of the best jokes in Kay’s show comes towards the end when he describes dating a woman with a three-year-old child who wasn’t speaking, but used babbling noises to communicate. Geared up with his knowledge of autism, Kay tells the woman he thinks her child has autism. “You idiot,” she tells him, “he’s speaking French!”.
Ending the show, Kay tells the audience that the only time he wished he did not have an autistic brother was when he had to spend almost a week in jail in New York City because Pete hung up on the New York Police Department when they phoned his childhood home in Canada.
But, Kay reflects, Pete was the only one who called and he will be the only person who will always be there for Kay, bringing the show to a poignant end.
Graham Kay: Pete & Me plays at the Gilded Balloon Patter House Aug 9-11, 13-26 at 18.20 as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024.
Words by Lauren Gilmour
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