post by @nataliagresty

Seen by Natalia at Edinburgh Festival Fringe on the 8th of August 2026

4 stars – an enthusiastic death pitch

Good news, girls [dating men], gays [dating men] and theys [dating men]! The very last Mad Man of our planet is out and about and he will be shutting the door behind him. But before he does that, we’ll have to join him for a confessional ride, if that’s okay: an hour-long close-up of a life heading towards an impending, unavoidable, and turns out not unmarketable, apocalypse. Worry not, though, he’s rebranding it, the shrewd NYC-based copywriter he is, with his astute eye for fads and hypes. 

The American stand-up comedian, writer and podcaster Steven Phillips-Horst returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with his 2025 debut: a one-man observational dystopian dramedy featured, amongst other publications, in Vogue magazine as a standout act, in Dua Lipa’s Service95 and in The New Yorker.

Our protagonist Steven, much like his creator Steven, is a young, liberal, gay, fashionable New Yorker with a task to rebrand and embellish the apocalypse so it sells well. Much like his creator, Steven, he’s quick, great with words and always on trend (if not setting the trend – rumours have it that he’s the one who coined the term ‘Dimes Square’). But back to our protagonist who’s already successfully marketed plus-sized boots designed in Perth, Australia (‘for women unafraid to take up space’), helped a dumping company move piles of fast fashion trash washed on shores of an ‘attractive’ beach of a popular island to a lesser attractive one, and now he’s on his final mission to make us excited about the end of it all, playing on our modern-day anxieties and depressions. Think Death of a Salesman 77 years later, approaching an ecological catastrophe due to overconsumption, same-day delivery and dangerously cheap Ryanair flights.

Phillips-Horst is undoubtedly an intelligent writer with great comedic timing and plenty of witty references. Venturing into the acting world solo sometimes sees him slightly less assured and fine-tuning his precision with handling the props and stage could strenghten the theatre part of the comedy, but it remains a dark pleasure to watch. I’ll have what he’s having.

5-30 Aug (not 17 or 24) at 12:50
Running time: 60 minutes
Venue: Downstairs at Assembly Roxy
Tickets and info: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-last-mad-man
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buddha_ph