Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

To call BriTANicK meta comedy doesn’t do justice to the four-dimensional chess game that master tricksters Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher play with their audience.

The complex script folds in on itself, turns itself inside-out, then springs back in a new form. Yet for all the structural tightness and pin-sharp performances, the pair also manage to inject some looser, knockabout fun into the equation. It’s not all about admiring their narrative audacity, – even though that’s what will knock you off your feet – the individual scenes are absurdly funny too.

Everything that happens from the cheesy 1980s rap that introduces them onwards turns out to mean something else. That ranges from anxiety-inducing reviews of their work, McElhaney’s garbled pseudo-patriotic speechifying, an AI tech assistant that goes rogue, and an implausible device that rewrites history. The latter gives the hour an unfeasible high concept that’s slightly overdone, but nonetheless pays off in spades.

Indeed, the towering edifice of absurdity often teeters, but never topples over, mainly because of McElhaney and Kocher’s commitment to their performances and their expansive ideas. The pair have written for Saturday Night Live and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and are the epitome of slick Hollywood professionalism. 

McElhaney’s physical work in a sketch where he becomes a marionette is especially outstanding, and you can believe the hard hours that went into perfecting it. Generally, he is slightly lower status than Kocher – double-act dynamics require at least some mismatch – but both are subservient to their clever, elaborate script, packed full of running gags and sublime callbacks.

The chandelier sketch alone is worth the ticket price, an absurd idea made ever more ridiculous every few beats. But it’s sold as plausible, yet with a knowing wink that it’s so clearly preposterous, which is a hard paradox to square – but they do.

It’s a knowing script throughout, with blatant audience plants, references to the losses they’ve endured at previous Fringes and swipes at others in comedy, such as hacky crowd-work comedians and – the lowest of the low – online comedy reviewers. However, it’s hard to see how even the grouchiest of critics wouldn’t be impressed by this gloriously grandiose hour.
 

Review date: 19 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard