Canary is, as Stuart Goldsmith puts it, a ‘show about the end of the fucking world’. Not normally a laugh-a-minute topic, perhaps, but we’re in good hands with Goldsmith. He’s been doing stand-up for 20 years, but it’s only in the last few that he’s found his niche as a climate comedian. He knows it’s not something anyone really wants to hear about, least of all when they’re looking for a good time. And indeed, in less capable hands, an hour of it may feel more like a lecture from your most annoying friend. But he’s self-aware enough to know that comedy with an agenda can ‘start to sound like christian rock’ and charismatic enough that he (mostly) manages to avoid coming across as too preachy.

His climate dread is all-consuming and he spends a lot of time grappling with what we can do about it, individually and collectively. A section of gentle crowd work encourages us to reveal our climate confessions, but his aim isn’t to shame anyone. He, too, is a hypocrite. Most of his work these days is at climate conferences all around the world which, yes, he flies to. Everyone should be a vegan, he politely admonishes us. But is he? ‘No fucking way’. 

The end of the world is an inherently unfunny subject but Goldsmith handles it with warmth and self-deprecation, jumping between anecdotes about his own climate struggles. It’s an important message that’s well worth hearing, but you get the feeling that he is, perhaps, sermonising to the converted. It doesn’t diminish the value of his work or his whip-smart delivery, but for a show that’s explicitly aiming to nudge the audience one notch further along on their climate journey, it mostly settles for communal laughter at a fear we already recognise. 

Stuart Goldsmith: Canary is on tour until Wednesday 18 November; reviewed at Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh; picture: Andre Patten.