Gig review by Steve Bennett at the Brighton Fringe

The Dark Side of the Mime starts as conventionally as you can imagine. Our mime takes to the stage in  the universal uniform: white face, black beret, black shirt, trousers and braces, and white gloves. He strolls along jauntily, picks an imaginary flower, breathes in its fragrance and presents it to a woman in the front row.

But that’s where the pleasantries end.

In the next scene, Finnish performer Marc Gassot encounters a self-important fisherman. Who he decapitates, before doing despicable things to the disembodied head. If you ever thought what mime was really missing are the sensibilities of 1980s slasher flicks and snuff porn, this is the show for you.

Like any sort of nasty comedy, there are shock laughs in the exaggeratedly extreme situations, but also diminishing returns. When you’ve parted an invisible lover’s ass cheeks and climbed inside their body within the first ten minutes, where do you go from there? Repeatedly back below the belt is Gassot’s reply, sucking so many fictional dicks you’ll worry about his sodium intake.

Reluctant audience members are frequently pressed into service to aid this always-visceral performance, their charmingly awkward attempts to join in at odds to the atrocities to which they become unwilling accomplices. No one is humiliated, but their discomfort is part of the gross-out humour.

Gassot’s a very skilled mime. Never are we in any doubt of what psychopathic scenario he’s conjuring up – much as we might prefer to be kept in the dark. Scenes are built not from movement and expression alone, but he also provides suitably gross sound effects, while his musical accompanist, Karl Sinkkonen, adds atmosphere.

Even if the show’s almost ceaseless sex-and-violence shtick proves fairly shallow, Gassot plays it with the bleak humour of mischief rather than malevolence.

• The Dark Side of the Mime returns to the Old Market in Hove at 9pm tonight.

Review date: 29 May 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Hove The Old Market