True to its name and slick in its form, Starter Pack doesn’t try to be anything more than a self-aware rough draft, and that’s what makes it brilliant.
If you’re going to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer, save yourself some time deliberating over the programme and get a ticket to Starter Pack.
This crispy one-hour comedy relay – shared cutely and generously by two up-and-coming comedians and good friends, Michael McPheat and Lianna Holston – is proof that all that’s required of a good night of comedy (or a good night of anything, really) is a healthy dose of self-awareness and a secret handshake.
Representing Milton Keynes and America, respectively, Michael McPheat (co-host of sell-out comedy night 0800-Comedy at London’s Battersea Arts Centre) and Lianna Holston (Runner Up, Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year 2024) get curious about the ice-breaker aspects of their personalities.
From the art (or hazard) of assimilating into UK culture as an American to the unilateral casting by one’s friends (close and not close enough) as The Gay Best Friend in any public function, it is clear that they each have an arsenal of personal content through which to sift. By the end of the night, it was also clear that everyone in that audience would have been delighted with an extra hour of that content.
After an audience warm-up that was nearly as calming and reassuring as my hot water bottle, Holston and McPheat brought our attention to the title of the show, making clear that this was a piece in progress, nothing too fancy, and certainly something with which to laugh along. That candid, this-will-not-be-perfect tone drove the whole show – a real balm at the end of anyone’s working day. From the start, Starter Pack had nothing to hide except the raw talent and hard work that the two comedians at its centre have done to bring it to the stage.
McPheat kicked off the evening with a scattered memory of a family barbeque at which he is constantly introduced as The Gay Best Friend. He grapples with the ways in which that label – smacked on his back multiple times before he can even make it to the potato salad – is simultaneously apt and absurd. With an anxious-radiant energy all his own, McPheat unpicks a title that he obviously loves but obviously needs some space from sometimes.
Holston followed with a superbly contrasting half-hour of her classic, emotionally reserved comedy. Practically nun-like in her side-splitting observations (most notably her one-day temp gig at a hedge fund’s reception desk), Holston recreates the most mundane moments of ordinary life and spins them into comedy gold.
True to its name and slick in its form, Starter Pack doesn’t try to be anything more than a self-aware rough draft, and that’s what makes it brilliant. Put it on your Fringe list before too many people get the same (good) idea.