Sofia May’s favourite game is simple: “Where were you on 9/11?”
Sofia stands behind the curtain to the side of the stage, her Converse shoes poking out at the bottom, and announces to her Edinburgh audience that the plane they’re on has been hijacked and they’ve got 60 minutes left to live. The West Port Oracle’s rows of airline seats and fake cabin walls make it the perfectly morbid setting for a show about being a 9/11 survivor and why she and everyone at her school in NYC (shoutout to I.S. 89) got screwed out of an HBO documentary.
It’s a bold opener that sums up May’s style of comedy: dark, eccentric, but above all, very funny. She gives off the vibe that she’d give you a hug if you needed it, and while delivering said hug, stick a sign on your back that says a whole bunch of slurs.
Sofia was a student at the school closest to the towers when they fell on 9/11 and has been in therapy ever since. But this isn’t one of those Edinburgh Fringe sob story shows; it’s an hour of engaging and wickedly dark humour that Sofia navigates with a Cheshire Cat-like grin, which appears just seconds after she senses she’s pushed the audience to a new point of tension.
Throughout the show, Sofia jokes about tough topics, from sexual assault to disabilities. She delivers her material with such offbeat positivity that it transforms the darker notes into something more accessible and somehow, at times, uplifting.
When randomly challenged by an audience member about the U.S. cutting foreign aid, Sofia is quick and replies with a wide eyed smile, “Do you think I care they did that?” Her ironic reply got a huge laugh from the audience before going back to her material without missing a beat. At least, I think she was being ironic?
Sofia sticks the landing (I HAD TO!) at the end of the show. She reflects on European views of what happened on that day and how the 9/11 Memorial Museum is significant to her, bringing a quietly powerful moment to a show that is raw and uniquely her own.
It’s an impressive debut hour from the proud New York-raised, Berlin-based comedian. Sofia May turns a world-famous tragedy into an Edinburgh Fringe comedy hour that is sharp, shocking, and genuinely hilarious.
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