Matt Forde: Project Holy Moly ★★★★

Matt Forde has long made political comedy look deceptively easy. In Project Holy Moly, his latest state-of-the-nation takedown, he once again proves himself a masterful imitator, skewering the personalities cluttering our politics with forensic observation and gleeful mimicry.

As ever, the impressions are the money shots. Some (Trump, Starmer, Farage) may have been heard several times before, but they work because they are rooted in recognisable truths: the vocal tics and the peculiar habits that reveal as much about the politician as any policy speech. Although he may lean firmly to the left, Forde’s ideological sympathy affords the new additions to his repertoire little protection. Andy Burnham is teased for his tendency to pose rhetorical questions and his awkward transitions between banter and gravitas, while Angela Rayner becomes the imagined answer to the problem of how best to confront Trump.

Reform, the Conservatives, the SNP, and the Greens all take their turn under the microscope. What makes Forde’s political comedy more satisfying than simple point-scoring, however, is that he usually identifies a behavioural truth before exaggerating it. The impersonation is merely the delivery system, the real joke is the insight beneath it.

Beneath the rapid-fire impressions, Project Holy Moly develops a more interesting argument about hope and delivery. Forde repeatedly questions politicians who offer optimism, identity and grand narratives without demonstrating how they will actually improve people’s lives. That theme becomes unexpectedly personal when he returns to his own experience of spinal cancer and its aftermath. Discussions of bladder and sexual dysfunction and further surgery are handled with startling candour and inevitably mined for some of the evening’s biggest laughs.

If there is a reservation, it is that for all the technical assurance on display, there is little sense of Forde pushing himself particularly far beyond what his regular audience already knows he does extremely well. That said, the targets may change, governments may implode and new impressions may join the collection, but Forde’s ability to locate the absurdity in political behaviour remains undimmed. For those already converted to his particular mix of satire, mimicry and political geeking out, this remains one of the surest bets at the Fringe.