Review by Jay Richardson

Fruitfully exploring the comedic tension of platonic friendship, James Huntington and Joanna Hutt describe themselves as each other's insignificant other.

Although that oracle on euphemism, The Urban Dictionary, defines this as a last-resort sexual partner, the only option left when all others have been exhausted, the pair have a rather more opaque relationship. On the surface, their fluid sketch double-act is born of squabbling and an affectionate, 14-year knowledge and persecution of each other's quirks and vulnerabilities.

Although protesting rather too vociferously that there's nothing sexual between them, their casting in each other's little playlets as fiery romantic leads, or erotically assertive eccentrics, keeps you wondering. Indeed, where the real Huntington and Hutt begin and end is anybody's guess, as they segue easily between clearly defined sketches and light, conversational engagement with the crowd.

She consistently portrays him as a stereotypical Welshman, but he refutes the broad accent, right up to the moment he wholeheartedly embraces it to great effect. In general, he comes across as an affected, slightly pseudish natural performer with irrepressible enthusiasm and delusions of artistic grandeur. She's much more down-to-earth and cynical but equally given to getting carried away with her authorial ambition.

The show opens with Huntington's celebration of that most enduring and in many ways least explicable of double acts, The Pet Shop Boys – an excuse for Hutt to reluctantly participate and roll her eyes, before making some indifferently cruel remarks about his father. Her counter-indulgence, in the form of a tedious, self-obsessed performance poet is a Fringe cliché that adds little to the existing mass of similar portrayals. But thankfully thereafter they get into chipping away at each other's identity.

Her annoyance at his assertion that she isn't tactile inspires their best skit, as he thrustingly embodies a body language guru preaching his dubious classes at a retreat in Mull; she his most forthright convert and ex-lover, humiliatingly entangling an audience member in their lingering ardour.

Hutt's offer to get Huntington snapped up, signing him up to a Christian dating site, is an amusing further muddying of her motivations. But a spoof Who Do You Think You Are? episode based on trying to find the story of his second-hand coat is less compelling, too much set-up for too little payoff. Equally, two awkward movie geeks stumbling over recommendations on their YouTube channel make little impact.

Happily, they both have their pet projects to share in this carefully balanced hour - her a Pedro Almodavar-esque misery vehicle for Penelope Cruz set in a crematorium; him, a thinly disguised television rip-off of The Bridge, relocated to toll booths between England and Wales. The latter winningly blows up the trivial differences between the cultures into irreconcilable dramatic conflicts.

In both of these enjoyably hammy set-pieces, the initially unwilling partner gamely joins in and supports the other, despite sometimes unflattering casting, identifying the duo most accurately, perhaps, as each other's misguided enabler.

Review date: 28 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Caves