Dreadfully Unrelatable and Deeply Hilarious: A Review of Alfie Dundas’ First Class Panic
★★★★ ½
Alfie Dundas will say anything about himself before you get the chance to. He’s a nepo baby? Check. One-percenter? Done. Taller than he looks online? It’s true! But before you can write him off as completely unrelatable, he’s somehow managed to connect with you. Sharply funny, truly human, and just a bit sweet, First Class Panic is best in show.
At the start of this tight, clean hour, Dundas lays out his infrastructure for you. He’s posh, real posh, titled posh (a minority, even, he argues!), and he’s been through real grief. He’s going to talk about both of those concepts, but he’s going to let you know in advance that he’ll be turning up the temperature throughout. When he gets to the hard stuff, you’ll be ready for it.
Dundas talks about growing up posh for the majority of his material: running into his classmates from Eton, his soft offer at Palantir, and his own activist cause seeing a statue with his surname brought down in Edinburgh, even. He’s quick on his feet, deftly shifting his material day to day, adapting many of his jokes for the “two-for-one tickets deal crowd” around him. The rest of his crowd work is inoffensive if a bit shallow and overcontrolled, perhaps an unavoidable symptom of his show’s polish. There isn’t room to dally; Dundas’ show is so spotless it’s almost impenetrable, though he’s charismatic enough to pull it off in spades.
When he finally arrives at the second portion of his show, the hard part, you are ready. Dundas speaks beautifully about the death of his younger brother, Louis, during their childhood. He reminds us of life. Of the everlasting power that celebration and memory hold in our hearts, long after our loved ones have departed. We all think of something, or someone, and by the end we can laugh heartily about them too. A real laugh. On paper, you might have almost nothing in common with Alfie Dundas. But I doubt you’d reach the end of First Class Panic without finding something.
Elena Cebulash
