Josh Howie: AIDS: A Survivor’s Story @ Canon’s Gait

If you laugh at someone saying ‘AIDS’ over and over, you’ll be in for lots of it. Josh Howie’s stand up show for this year’s Fringe could definitely do with a bit more variety, however. He announces at the start that he’s possibly had AIDS since he was eighteen. In a cluttered development over the course of the hour, he explains that he was morbidly obsessed with the idea that he could have AIDS after having unprotected sex with his first girlfriend. In fact, the whole reason he made her his girlfriend was to convince her to get the AIDS test, as he was too anxious to.

The AIDS theme is never quite realised, and the show feels quite claustrophobic by the end. It could have been expanded to a funny and scathing look at his experience in the late 80s AIDS crisis, and those teenage indiscretions of an obnoxious prick with hypochondria. Now, that actually does sound pretty hilarious! Instead he dives right into a disorienting story that doesn’t seem to be sure of its own point.

At first trying to convince the audience he has AIDS, and then, no, that he was just a pretty unforgiveable jerk (as most 18-year-olds are). At the end, Howie is trying to claw his way up, citing his family and wife to prove that he’s a decent guy and his teenage behavior, then, has been redeemed. He describes his fashion-industry steeped family, which meant he was close to a lot of gay men who died of AIDS, and that he is now a loving husband and father. This could have meant a unique and ironic perspective on his chosen topic, but by the time he brings it up it just seems like back pedaling. An apology for the first half he’d spent trying to convince the audience of the opposite. By the end you’re relieved to be out of the swamp, but also left with a sense of missed opportunity.