“For almost two years the Vagabond roamed the lands following his exile from the North… fated to return to the place that once shunned him”. This might sound like something from Game of Thrones, but it is in fact the blurb for Reginald D Hunter‘s new Fringe show.
The “place that shunned” the American comedian is Edinburgh, where he made a faltering return this week. That cod-mythic tagline alludes to a row here in 2024, prompted by a joke he told comparing Israel and Palestine to a married couple in an abusive relationship. An Israeli audience member heckled him, prompting an ill-judged back-and-forth, and the show devolved into what my colleague Dominic Cavendish called “the most unpleasant comedy gig I’ve ever attended“.
Police Scotland investigated the incident, and several of Hunter’s tour dates were cancelled. Though the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was unsuccessful in a subsequent attempt to get him prosecuted, he jokes that he’s spent the last 22 months in “comedy jail” nonetheless, treated as “radioactive” by old friends and colleagues.
Hunter has, in the past, retrenched when criticised. Back in 2013, when an audience member called his material misogynistic, he called her a “b—-” on social media, writing that he was “pleased that my performance hurt you”. He seemed to be nodding to that older headline-making spat on Friday, when he dryly remarked that “Jews cancel way better than feminists.”
True to form, the 57-year-old doubles down again here, repeating a version of the Israel/Palestine routine that landed him in hot water. It’s edgy, but hardly the darkest joke I’ve heard about the conflict, and on Friday met with a round of supportive applause.
But that support ebbed away during an odd (and arguably far more offensive) routine about singer Sammy Davis Jr’s conversion to Judaism. Interrupting himself, Hunter mentioned that he had a new member of his publicity team in the audience to “check his homework”; he promised to leave the Davis bit out in future, if the new PR thought it was misjudged.
If he does drop that routine – and I hope he will – it won’t harm the show’s structure, since it doesn’t have one. This is a disjointed, stop-start hour, full of awkward pauses and incongruous dead ends. For instance, Hunter follows an odd, jokeless summary of the life of Nazi architect Albert Speer by taking a show-of-hands poll of his audience, asking them about different kinds of anger – an intriguing idea he abruptly abandons without a punchline.
It’s not entirely without good jokes – a routine about grooming gangs provides a surprisingly whimsical highlight; a gross-out gag about cunnilingus proves crudely effective – but nothing sucks the energy from a comedy gig like suspecting the performer isn’t on top of his material. This is doubly true with controversial jokes; you can’t be a fumbling, hesitant provocateur. But here, Hunter was just that.
Reginald D Hunter: Something Wicked That Other Way Comes is at Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh until Aug 31 (tickets: here)