Toronto Fringe Review: A Comedy Show at the End of the World

“We’re mad, scared and tired all the time.” 

That line comes near the end of Jon Blair’s A Comedy Show at the End of the World and it hits like a sledgehammer. I wasn’t looking around, but I could sense everyone nodding their heads, at least inwardly, in agreement.

Thankfully, Blair’s new hour-long solo show does a lot to alleviate that very real anxiety. Sure, the world’s going to hell, but at least there’s comedy.

The premise is that the world as we know it now has ended. In a place with the charming name of New Garbagetown, radioactive raccoons and hordes of mutants roam the streets. One good thing? The oligarchs and fascists tried leaving earth on a rocket, but it blew up (sweet, sweet justice). 

Blair, looking as if he walked off the set from the latest Mad Max sequel, plays a former TV star who’s entertaining us with a series of sketches that help fill out this post-apocalyptic world. 

In one, a man who bought up a mountain to provide entertainment for the world’s richest people in search of a thrill, is bemoaning the fact that no one’s climbing it anymore — they’re all going up into space. In another sketch that hits close to home, Blair plays an actor who wants to make sure that his likeness won’t be used to one day sell adult diapers. 

Throughout, you can sense the comic questioning the purpose of comedy, especially when he suggests that people who made Trump a joke early on may have been complicit in normalizing him and his dangerous policies. 

Tightened and more unified since its appearance earlier this year at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, the show could still use some tweaking. The stakes for Blair’s character aren’t quite clear, and a bit more about the play’s antagonist, the Bone Cruncher, would help till out the world. The scene transitions could also be smoother.

But this is a solid show with lots of laughs (albeit dark ones) and lots to chew over. Plus, you might win a can of beans. 

A Comedy Show at the End of the World is on now until July 11 at the Toronto Fringe. Show times and tickets.