by ⭐⭐⭐½
I’m not surprised that Sam Jay could put on one of the best stand-up hours at the Fringe (I had Jay’s 2020 special ranked second in my year-end list).
I am surprised the judges at the Edinburgh Fringe decided this was one of the best shows among the 3,000+ being mounted this August, considering the low-key way Jay played out her set in the lightly-attended performance I witnessed earlier in the month. Seeing her in the upstairs room at Pleasance felt more like watching Dave Chappelle in his in-between years, when he’d hold court for hours at a time in the wee hours, searching out his emotions and thoughts with little care for the showmanship of it all.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Jay finds herself probing what it means for her to live in America as a black lesbian in 2025. Attending her first rodeo in Texas made her rethink not only if she knows any “real” men, but also leads her down a path to argue the need to understand people who lead different lives form us before we can ever hope to convince them to change their beliefs. “We started trying to force acceptance,” she argues.
Jay worries, too, about how today’s kids lack social skills due to an increased reliance on technology and AI, but isn’t sure what the answer might be.
She knows that, in America anyhow, “we’ve been dealing with unloved whites from the start” when it comes to race relations, and compares what’s happening in the Trump Administration in 2025 to what white Americans did with swimming pools when black Americans got into the pool, poisoning the water or paving over the pools entirely to prevent anyone non-white from benefitting. “I don’t have a joke for this, I just think that’s what’s happening.”
She’s not wrong. But here’s hoping that with some of her other lines of thought, she enlists some fact-checkers so her points can hit her target audience.
Sam Jay: We The People plays Pleasance Upstairs through Aug. 24, 2025.
