Brighton Fringe review by Steve Bennett

You might imagine that this loose comedy show about a drone bee and his queen in the ‘last hive’ might have some apocalyptic environmental message. But even such a casually passing notion would be far more thought than creators David Tann and Karen Houge apparently put into this fatally under-developed mess.

Half-considered ideas are thrown together in what seems less a stream of consciousness than a desperate improv game where woefully poor ad-libbers are trying to keep a story going, a feeling exacerbated by directionless lines they often forget.

The confusing, meandering narrative has David The Drone, first desperate to mate with the queen, then sent on a mission to find the White Bee (who’s actually dressed in black) before vowing vengeance on humans. Then we learn the insect masses are somehow responsible for Trump, Brexit and the Middle East crisis, and now they are plotting a suicide attack on the EU Parliament to kill teenage environmental protester Greta Thunberg (why she’s the enemy isn’t really explained) with a bomb triggered by  the drone masturbating. 

Oh yes, and social media is bad, so the bees will fix that too.

Yes, it really is such a random dump of, erm, buzzwords in place of any proper ideas, with clunky, very literal dialogue and performance that could be described as ‘amateurish’ to be generous.  At times it seems like this British-Norwegian duo of good-natured but shambolic Gaullier-trained performers might be going for ‘so bad it’s good’ – but they only ever get the first part of that equation right.

A couple of  moments of audience participation are possibly worthwhile ideas, but they are executed in such a typically awkward manner that nothing really comes of it. Besides, we’re too punch-drunk from a story that’s at once flimsy and so bafflingly random that we have very little investment in the show.

Shockingly, they performed a run of this self-indulgent nonsense at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, so it’s clearly supposed to be this shoddy, this is no early work-in-progress. The lack of effort and application is insulting – don’t be stung.

Review date: 7 May 2019
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton The Warren