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Ironing Board Man

 
Paul Fisher Cockburn Review by Paul Fisher Cockburn 4 Published: 8 Aug 2025 Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower Show Dates: 30 Jul 2025-17 Aug 2025

“Good luck explaining what this is,” Jody Kamali – creator and performer of Ironing Board Man – says at the end of the show. To be fair, he has a point: it’s just not one you’d expect a sweating, exhausted performer – who has genuinely put his all into entertaining us and is now desperate for a positive reaction and some great “word of mouth” endorsements – to make.

It really shouldn’t work. But it does. Brilliantly

But it’s fair to say that Kamali has a point. In one sense, this is an easy show to describe — a slam-dunk mash-up of cinematic superhero and romance tropes, performed with great energy and enthusiasm by one man and 10 ironing boards dressed in various outfits, overlaid with a montage of snatches of film dialogue, pop songs and specially recorded dialogue. But that description genuinely fails to do the absurdity and wonder of the show justice.

Ironing Board Man is precisely the kind of wonderfully “fringe-y” Fringe show that appears increasingly rare in these cost-conscious days; a production based on the kind of idle thought any sensible but imaginative person might have towards the end of a busy, tiring day, and then dismiss with a head-shaking: “Naah!”

But not only did Kamali have the thought – thanks to his wife hanging a blouse on an ironing board after she’d ironed it, apparently – he went on to create a profoundly absurd piece of theatre based on it, a work that blatantly riffs on (or rips off – “puh-TAY-toh, puh-TAH-toh”) plot points from Batman, Superman and Dirty Dancing. Plus Cocktail, Karate Kid, Top Gun, Titanic, Gladiator, The Matrix, The Lion King… You get the idea.

In some respects it feels a bit of a mess; in others, it’s clearly a very carefully choreographed production that delivers surprisingly impactful moments of humour and pathos through the simplest of means. For example, Kamali uses sampled dialogue and song lyrics to get across significant narrative points and character story arcs. And yet, all we see before us are a few ironing boards decked out in dresses and wigs. It really shouldn’t work. But it does. Brilliantly.

Kamali himself doesn’t have too much dialogue during the show: perhaps just as well, as he is physically always on the move, throwing himself around with little apparent fear of hurting himself.

“Good luck explaining what this is,” he said. Well, it’s funny, it’s exciting, it’s ridiculous. I’d say that’s precisely what you should want from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

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The Blurb:

One man. Ten ironing boards. One epic soundtrack. Prepare to be amazed as physical comedian Jody Kamali skillfully transforms these everyday household items into the tools of a Hollywood-style, action-packed romance. With heart-pounding moments and emotional depth, the packed-out run at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe earned standing ovations. There's gunfire, there's a wedding, there's more gunfire and there's revenge – plus plenty of laughter along the way. 'Exuberantly, unapologetically mindless... it's too funny' (Guardian). 'An astonishing tour de force' (DarkChat.co.uk). 'More laughs than a laundry room full of nitrous oxide and easily amused hyenas' (GetYourCoatsOn.com).