Award-winning stand-up Sam Lake returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a brand new uplifting show about coming out as Spanish, grief and the Ice Age movie franchise.
Esméralda is a heartfelt and hilarious romp through ludicrous anecdotes from Sam’s childhood, growing up in Cornwall, visiting Disneyland and the difficulties caused by not speaking the same language as half of his family. Setting out to better understand his Spanish Mum and the choices she made, Sam examines the lessons he learnt from her, the advice she shared and the lasting influence of her powerful last words. Expect stories about Zumba, edibles and a dash of Español as Sam embraces his heritage (he’s finally trying to learn some Spanish) and dives into themes of personal destiny, family legacy and living up to other people’s expectations.
Lake has recently starred in Dave’s The Comedy Guide to Life & All4’s The Joy of Missing Out with Tom Allen. His writing has been featured on Mock The Week (BBC2), Breaking The News (BBC Radio Scotland) & Newsjack (BBC Radio 4Extra).
Sam Lake Q&A
How does it feel to be returning to Edinburgh Fringe?
Sometimes It feels like sipping a drink that you think is disgusting , like “I don’t know if I loved that, let me try it again just to be sure, oh maybe it’s not that bad, oh wait, it’s worse now, or is it?”. It’s a weird relationship. Ultimately, I love the chance to bring a new show to an audience and the fringe lets me do that. Also, I live here in Edinburgh and it feels nice all my comedy chums come here once a month and we get to bond in shared trauma.
What can you tell us about your show and its inspiration?
My show is called Esméralda, and it is all about my mum, a wonderful woman who sadly passed away from breast cancer when I was 18. It took me a while to want to try to do this show, because I want it to be a loving tribute to her and I wanted to make sure I was the person I needed to be to do this show. Hopefully, I’ve got there. If not, oops, sorry mum.
How do you think audiences will react to the show?
This is the first show I’ve done trying to talk about something quite personal, and some of the messages people have sent me after seeing it have been very touching. It’s really got me thinking with this show the goal isn’t just to be funny, but also to let people in a bit, let some people know this is what I’ve gone through, here’s how I found it, if that helps you at all, marvellous.
How have you been preparing for the festival?
My usual routine of vocal warm-ups, gaining 15 lbs of pure muscle, vision boarding and making a map of all free-to-access public toilets in Edinburgh. You know why.
Will you get a chance to enjoy the rest of the festival?
That does rather depend on my own mental wellbeing and how quickly that depletes. When I’m in a good mood, yes, I plan on going to see as much as I can. I have my spreadsheet ready.
Do you have any Fringe anecdotes you can share with us?
Can I just say there’s plenty of stories of horror fringe audiences, so let me do one about two rather lovely people. My show is a Pay What You Want show, so you don’t have to buy a ticket unless you want to guarantee a seat, you can just pay what you thought the show was worth afterwards. And to take those payments I use a card reader which never seems to have a signal.
And I had two audience members last year who so badly wanted to give me some money but the reader wan’t working, and I said “you know what, it’s fine, I don’t want to hold you up” but they insisted on walking around town with me until we found decent enough signal so the card reader would connect and they could give me the princely sum of £5. Most people would just make up an excuse and walk off, but they were total babes. I spent the fiver on a tattie dog and cried.
Sam Lake: Esméralda is at Monkey Barrel 2 from 31 July to 25th August
