Brighton Fringe review by Steve Bennett

I'm sitting cross-legged on a very blustery seafront, watching a woman dressed as a man emerge from a beach hut gyrating to Sexy And I Know It… it has to be the Brighton Fringe.

Yet oddly – aside from a big stunt finish which, spoiler alert, is depicted below – this is not really a piece site-specific to venue number 538. However the setting certainly adds a novelty value and a sense of adventurous occasion.

The premise is that Chris Titmas is a presenter on shopping channel VSS, and he starts by raffling off some of the peculiar items as seen on TV; from impractical hybrids to household items with a rather yucky second function.

This is pretty funny, but the bulk of the 40-minute show involves him reading from his supposed autobiography about the time he first hooked up with his fiancé, of which the two jokes are mispronouncing that last word and substituting 'flip' for a stronger four-letter word, lest any passing youngsters be offended. Then he reads the chapter headings from the almost-inevitable self-help book he's written, too.

Sadly this is some distance from the quality of I, Partridge, the book which was based on a similar premise but was infinitely more nuanced – and far funnier. Having his eyes fixed on the hardback results in a very static performance from Titmas, the alter-ego of performance artist, Susannah Hewlett, so the dull material is presented in a flat way.

All this is contrived to lead up to an ending you can only see in a location such as this, and which we're all encouraged to share on social media, if there has been no prior explanation of why we're outside an overpriced shed.

I'll let the picture speak a thousand words. As a grand gesture it's memorable, but it's not an organic consequence of the preceding piffle. Nice payoff, shame about the show.

Review date: 4 May 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett