Brighton Fringe comedy review by Steve Bennett

Male sketch duo Intimate Strangers would like to revel in a dark brand of humour, although they apply their sick ideas far too bluntly: an unsophisticated brutal slasher movie compared to the exquisite psychological thriller of something like the League Of Gentlemen. 

There’s little tease or tension, they tend to delve straight into comments about necrophilia or ramming a stick up a cat’s vagina, seeking reactions from shock more than subtlety. And although such lines are given context, it’s usually in an artless way. 

One exception is a sketch based on Simon Says, where awkwardness becomes anxiety and then menace – all punctured by a joke. That the payoff is predictable is mitigated by the way the drama draws in the audience in.

But that would sit next to a lot of far less imaginative fare. Take for example a luvvie actress creation, that’s as thin as tissue paper compared to Colin Hoult’s superficially similar Anna Mann, but who boasts a nuance, backstory and litany of jokes that this duo cannot hope to match.

Matthew Radway and James Taylor Thomas are reasonably versatile performers, even if they tend too quickly to an over-familiar cadence of ironic millennial detachment. A whole, predictable sketch revolves around the line: ‘No mate, your girlfriend is *literally* a tiger…’

The ancient joke linking Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire to haemorrhoids gets another run-out, while an oft-used trick is deconstructions of Snow White, Cluedo and The Grand Old Duke Of York, one-gag affairs that outstay their welcome.

Between the sketches comes rather wooden banter, too over-rehearsed to convince anyone that it’s supposed to be spontaneous. This all leads up to Radway doing a Bond spoof that gives this show its title, and which must rank among the weakest of the thousands of Bond spoofs ever written.

Cheap, sloppily written and only adequately performed, this show doesn't suggest any reason to want to get more intimately acquainted with these strangers.

Review date: 8 May 2017
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