Review by Jay Richardson

A highly promising Fringe debut, The Three Englishmen here serve notice of being a confident, inventive sketch act worth keeping an eye on.

The misleadingly monikered quartet of Ben Cottam, Jack Hartnell, Nick Hall and Tom Hensby might seem more student revue than most of their peers, not least for their propensity to break into melodious song. But there’s a slick execution to their comedy that belies their relative inexperience.

After a by-the-numbers initial skit involving Brazilian football supporters revealing more than their passion for the beautiful game, the earliest indication that something different is transpiring comes with a ukulele-accompanied domestic spat in which the four tunefully bicker about not waking a baby, building an amusing tableau with their easy harmonising.

Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp’s three-way marriage is deliciously skewered, with Hartnell a cutlery-fingered, cockney popinjay as the Pirates of the Caribbean star. The scene is made by Cottam as the nervy director, torn between his devotion to his de facto leading man and leading lady wife, a bullying, manipulative shrew played by bearded little Hall. Here, as elsewhere, a blackout releases the sketch without a strong punchline to close, though it’s not as big a problem as you might imagine, the mood of these pieces more important than individual jokes, which certainly aren’t lacking.

An obvious affection for their characters renders The Three Englishmen instantly endearing too, whether it be Hartnell joined by his gentile colleagues as orthodox Jews belting out popular hits, with a hoo, a hey and an oy vey!; a nervous student persistently fluffing his French oral exam; or three gossipy Irish women preoccupied with the hoovering habits of their neighbours.

The foursome create so much from so little, Cottam’s spot-on Meatloaf parody and the melodramatic singer’s fondness for bats, wolves and motorbikes corralled into an initially stilted, suddenly soaring anthem with Thom Yorke and Chris Martin. Their best sketch encompasses four acts: competing estate agents become basketball court adversaries, their macho showboating facilitated in an ingenious manner that comes to resemble the slow-motion, 360 degree shots of The Matrix, before a further twist and a cute little coda tagged on the end.

Some are more quickfire, as a solitary cast member takes the spotlight while the rest of the group costume change. A further burst of ensemble harmonising around cooking breakfast scarcely elicits a laugh while still entertaining. The only bum note is a series of slice-of-life vignettes from Hall, the formulaic pull-back-and-reveals grating after the third instance.

Ultimately, the four wittily take turns to mythologise the group’s origins. So now we know where they came from. But where they’re going remains ripe with potential.

Review date: 24 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson