BriTANick – Soho Theatre

They tell you to laugh and you laugh. They tell you how much to laugh, and you listen. But when you try to stop laughing, that seems impossible. Welcome to BriTANick.

The comedy duo of Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, under the direction of Alex Edelman and produced by Zach Zucker and Allegra Rosenberg, brings a thrilling series of short comedy sketches with a non-stopping rhythm and precision that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Starting with a very short slapstick sketch of an annoying spirit that decides to haunt an innocent reader, the audience will be quickly introduced into this clockwork machinery were the two actors play a version of themselves playing characters through eight sketches and some intermezzos. The deceptively simple mechanism of addressing the audience as if it was a pause in the narrative, a break in between sketches, adds up to involve the spectators into different storylines that start at the very beginning and go all the way up until the end.

After the intro with the ghost, we see the actors introducing themselves and some of the running jokes that will appear for the rest of the show, including the poverty of the actors, the immatureness of their comedy, the forced abstinence of Kocher (including his “art loophole”), and the need to commit to more serious material of the duo.

In the second sketch, the audience is presented with a very interesting piece of spoken pantomime, representing an encounter between two brothers in a long past time, and conflicts that arise between them. The most interesting part of this piece is the commitment of the two actors to only react to what the other proposes, never denying the narrative constructed, forcing the situation into exhilarating outcomes. This will be followed by a duo of contemporary poets that struggle to get their ideas sorted, two gay men on a mobile free date, two gastronomic reviewers with food recommendations delivered in extreme and insolent ways, a western with a plethora of characters fighting for the spotlight, and an extremely dangerous memory clinic. All the sketches keep on building on the conflicts that are presented with perfect timing throughout the show. Finally, the last sketch presents a failed attempt to play a sketch, acknowledging the silliness of the actors and the writing in metatextual levels.

Seemingly simple, the play constantly articulates resources to force what it acknowledges is cheap and predictable comedy. Although acknowledging these resources as commonplace doesn’t make them more interesting by itself, this show builds layers on the situations, to the point where the actors seem to be confused themselves (one of them realized showed his broken zipper near the end of the show, and I’m still unsure whether it was a joke or a true accident being acknowledged), even if their precision and timing clearly show they know what they are doing.

Non-stopping, exhilarating comedy, a show to see and enjoy. An hour that seems to disappear in an act of magic.

BriTANick hits the road after closing in Soho on the 4 March visiting Brighton and Manchester.

Soho Theatre, London Mon 27 Feb – Sat 4 Mar 2023 – https://sohotheatre.com/shows/britanick/

Brighton Komeida on 5th March – https://komediabrightontickets.komedia.co.uk/ticketbooth/shows/873632629  

Manchester Canvas 6th March https://www.wegottickets.com/event/566146

Reviewer: Gonzalo Sentana

Reviewed: 27th February 2023

North West End UK Rating: ★★★★★