Anna Burnside reviews a strong set with ‘a lot of layers’.
Kieran Hodgson’s mum advised him against doing this show. Growing up, loving everything American was his sweetly bookish way of rebelling against his earnest teacher parents.
Still, he nerded out over JFK speeches and made his first pilgrimage on a cheap flight to JFK in 2008.
Seventeen years on here he is, with impressions of Keir Starmer and his constantly super-excited American agent all present and correct.
Hodgson’s Pleasance venue was so hot and crowded that someone with high blood pressure had a funny turn. Thankfully they recovered in time for one of the best bits, in which Hodgson speculates that Trump is, in many ways, a stand-up comedian. Specifically, a Nazi Ross Noble.
There are a lot of layers to Voice of America. On one level it’s about Hodgson’s biggest American triumph to date, playing Sandwich Guy in the opening of the 2023 superhero movie The Flash.
It’s also a story of a young man obsessed with train timetables, with what his husband describes as an “early retirement personality”, which seems at odds with the dominant culture of the USA.
And, although he claims he is not going to give him airspace, it’s about Trump. How can it not be? In a year when few Edinburgh shows park the Nazi Ross Noble at the door, this is one of the best.
Kieran Hodgson: Voice of America performs at Pleasance Courtyard (Beyond) at 21:30 until August 24, 2025.
Photo by Paul Gilbey.
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