Review by Steve Bennett

Comedy’s de facto double-act dynamic is of affable bickering between dominant idiot and the fool who gives him status.

With John Biddle and Ollie Birch – contracted to Jollie – it’s a little more complicated than that. Because Ollie use to go out with John’s wife Amy, and that’s the cause of just a wee bit of tension, providing an intriguing undercurrent to this frequently brilliant musical sketch show.

The duo are here in Edinburgh to prepare for a much more prestigious festival: The European Festival Of Story And Song in Warsaw. This is their chance to polish the routines they’ve prepared about various EU member states before their high-profile gig. It’s probably fair to say some of the scenes need a bit more work, not least because of Ollie’s habit of trying to sneak racist subtext into the writing.

For Germany, we learn the ‘genuine’ Grimm’s story of Cinderella, for Switzerland we get a musical about assisted suicide, while for Romania we get an overblown Dracula melodrama, much to John’s chagrin.

The pair frequently quarrel about what they are doing, and how best to spend the £17,000 the Warsaw festival has promised them. They play off each other wonderfully, trading deliciously snidey comments as a way of obliquely addressing the elephant in their relationship – without letting this undermine the excellence of their magnificently silly set pieces and inspired musical numbers.

Sometimes farcical, sometimes surreal, there’s a genuine sense of fun from these two talented comics, not to mention that fabulously new take on the double-act relationship based, it seems, on uncomfortable reality. Last year, my colleague said: ‘They will be a double act to look out for next Fringe.’ She was right, they’ve turned out to be ace.

Review date: 19 Aug 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett