Millerick wanted, he announces, to do a jokes-only show for 2018’s Edinburgh Festival. No big themes, no politics. No sad stories. A couple of devastating curveballs in his life later, and Sunflower’s far from the all-lolz hour he set out to write. The half of the show written pre-apocalyptic life events is one of big…
There is much debate about what a classic ‘Edinburgh Show’ is. Does it have to have a theme, does it have to be gag-heavy, is a narrative essential? I have spent much of the last year fielding questions on this very subject because of the huge disparity between what I had promised to deliver with…
Stand-up comedy has changed. Well, it’s always changing, but as Garrett Millerick points out to The Soho Theatre for a run of his Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Sunflower’, stand-up has moved vastly from what it once was in the past couple of years. Comedians aren’t just here to make us laugh anymore. They’re here to make…
Garrett Millerick is a big bear of a man who you would think could make a good living out of being a professional cynic. From the moment he squeezes onto the stage he is in a controlled rage, despite the show being called the positively cheerful Sunflower. “I’m not a fun guy” he bellows. You…
‘I’m not a fun guy,’ insists Garrett Millerick all too readily during his excellent new Fringe hour. His amusingly bombastic and stand-offish stage persona, then, sounds like it’s fully replicated in real life, a long distance away from the microphone. Still, given the events recounted in Sunflower, Millerick has every right to be a bit…
It has long been the preserve of great comics and great boors alike to insist on their right to say the unsayable. In this breakthrough show by Garrett Millerick, the emphatically bearded 35-year-old finds a persuasive middle ground that is all his own. Starting with amiably overheated gripes, he turns his anger, frustration and sadness…
Garrett Millerick can’t help his unsunny disposition. He’s a natural grump, even with the best of intentions to make a happy, frothy show named after his favourite Beach Boys album. However, from his grumpiness comes a mine of humour which addresses the question ‘is there anything you’re not allowed to joke about?’ It’s a thoughtful…
Garrett Millerick is a bit of a favourite with Bouquets & Brickbats. Last year, with The Dreams that Stuff is Made Of, he seemed to be in a very dark place indeed, delivering a set that pulsed with anger and derision. It’s a happier, healthier looking man who steps onto the tiny stage of the Tron,…
I wish Garrett Millerick hadn’t suffered a horrific personal ordeal last year. Not because of any basic human empathy you understand – it’s well known that reviewers harbour no such feelings – but it because has given his show that now-clichéd moment of pathos about two-thirds in. It will only fuel the notion that at this festival,…
There’s a fair amount of false advertising on the flyers that litter the Royal Mile every year at the Fringe, but it’s rare for a comedian to call out his own promotional material midway through his show for its lack of verisimilitude. Garrett Millerick had set out to write a happy show to counteract all…