THOUGHT you’d check out an exciting new comedian or play at Edinburgh, only to discover you’re the only person there? Here’s how to cope with the embarrassment.
Attempt to leave
The likelihood of this succeeding depends on when you arrive for the gig. If you’re ten minutes early you’ll settle in happily, thinking the rest of the audience is about to appear, and the horror will only dawn on you slowly. However, if you turn up one minute before showtime to find an empty venue, you may still be able to leg it back out the door.
Try to sit as far away as possible
Unfortunately, due to the steward being overzealous and also having no other audience to usher, they are way ahead of you and the door has been firmly shut, so you have no choice but to stay. You try to hide yourself away in the furthest reaches of the back row, but the steward insists that the seats are filled from the front. That means that when the comedian or actors bound on stage you can see the whites of their eyes and the mortification on their faces.
Smile encouragingly
Okay, so you’re going to have to suffer through the entirety of this 55-minute set by a comedian who is probably shit. Given that you’ll have to maintain eye contact with the performer for every single second of it, because it would be even weirder if you looked elsewhere, you need to arrange your features into a suitably encouraging expression. Well, you’re aiming for encouraging, but from their perspective it could be anything from constipated to murderous.
Don’t break the fourth wall
Given that it’s just you and a tiny, pretentious theatre troupe in the room and you’re desperate to escape due to the immense pressure on you to pay attention and enjoy it, there’s a massive temptation to say ‘Honestly, guys, you don’t have to do this’. However, if you break their flow they will almost certainly start crying about what a terrible Fringe they’re having, which will be even more mortifying. Let them continue, even though you’re cringing so hard your colon is about to come out of your mouth.
Overcompensate at the end
When the show finally ends, it falls upon you to make enough noise to make up for the other 99 people who should also have been there, the f**king cowards. You clap and whoop excessively while the performer or performers take a bow and visibly die on the inside. You can’t help your solitary clapping sounding sarcastic, but eventually your they tell you to stop taking the piss and f**k off, which you gladly do, while vowing to never support up-and-coming artists ever again.
