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Brighton Fringe
Until Monday May 26
Ironworks Studio B, 30
Directors Alex Worrall, Julian McDowell and Nick Brice
Writers (for Menu Four): Doug Grissom, Scott Mcateer, Michael Kelnderian, Alex Brown, Jonathan Kaufman
Cast includes: William Neame, Miranda Everitt, Scott Virgo, Emma Bean, Hana Vincent, Stephen Povey, Andy Bell, Lisa Fairfield, Kate Webley and Lucy Brinkmann
Running time: approximately one hour
The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show is a mood-enhancing, life-affirming start to the day – and after an 18-year run at the Edinburgh Fringe and an 11-year absence from Brighton, where it began, it is back on the English coast.
For the duration of the Brighton Fringe, it offers four menus that serve up light and digestible, yet highly satisfying playlets, together with coffee, croissants and strawberries.
To make the formula even more appealing, booking one menu entitles you to 50 percent off the others. Even full price, it’s a bargain.
I have, alas, only found time for Menu Four, which delivers five short plays that go as far as possible in the timeframe to spanning the gamut of human relationships – from the low class to the upper middle class, the youthful to the middle-aged and the deeply private to the supposedly diplomatic.
The focus is on the funny side of our emotional ineptitude as a species, but taut direction, deft writing and full-hearted acting bring out the underlying poignancy without any heaviness that we may not welcome early in the day.
We begin with a middle-aged, very English, achingly middle class couple, thoroughly dressed in quilted jackets and stout footwear – brogues for him and gardening wellingtons for her.
It is therefore immediately hilarious when she demands of her husband, who is deep in The Sunday Times, “Undress me Clarence”.
The comedy builds and is sustained until a punchline that touches on the hollowness of it all.
That is taken up by the next relationship “Transactions” between a prostitute and her client whose fantasy is that they are an old married couple with no desire for sex.
“I just want to feel normal for ten minutes,” the client laments to the prostitute he is paying to wear an extremely unrevealing nightdress and woolly bed socks.
In keeping with the move back to the great fringe of the South, “Saturday Night Brighton, Sunday Morning Portslade” ventures beyond the heterosexual and to the outer reaches of Brighton for what tantalisingly might be more than a one-night stand.
Finally, “Interpreter” takes us away from the personal to the political with a meeting between the ambassador of the fictional Luketia and the United States. Flanked by security in Aviator sunglasses and suits, they are set apart by their footwear – ultra-polished for the U.S. representative, less-so for the Luketian.
Squeezed in between is the interpreter, desperately translating as polite civilities make way for getting down to “bronze tacks” to highly-colourful swearing that earns him the sack from both sides and leads to a complete breakdown in relations.
Given the state of world-politics, it could be unsettling, but in the quasi-fantasy world of these morning playlets, the perfect format for starting the day, we emerge sanguine and amused.
The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show,
Brighton Fringe
Until Monday May 26
Ironworks Studio B, 30
Directors Alex Worrall, Julian McDowell and Nick Brice
Writers (for Menu Four): Doug Grissom, Scott Mcateer, Michael Kelnderian, Alex Brown, Jonathan Kaufman
Cast includes: William Neame, Miranda Everitt, Scott Virgo, Emma Bean, Hana Vincent, Stephen Povey, Andy Bell, Lisa Fairfield, Kate Webley and Lucy Brinkmann
Running time: approximately one hour
The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show is a mood-enhancing, life-affirming start to the day – and after an 18-year run at the Edinburgh Fringe and an 11-year absence from Brighton, where it began, it is back on the English coast.
For the duration of the Brighton Fringe, it offers four menus that serve up light and digestible, yet highly satisfying playlets, together with coffee, croissants and strawberries.
To make the formula even more appealing, booking one menu entitles you to 50 percent off the others. Even full price, it’s a bargain.
I have, alas, only found time for Menu Four, which delivers five short plays that go as far as possible in the timeframe to spanning the gamut of human relationships – from the low class to the upper middle class, the youthful to the middle-aged and the deeply private to the supposedly diplomatic.
The focus is on the funny side of our emotional ineptitude as a species, but taut direction, deft writing and full-hearted acting bring out the underlying poignancy without any heaviness that we may not welcome early in the day.
We begin with a middle-aged, very English, achingly middle class couple, thoroughly dressed in quilted jackets and stout footwear – brogues for him and gardening wellingtons for her.
It is therefore immediately hilarious when she demands of her husband, who is deep in The Sunday Times, “Undress me Clarence”.
The comedy builds and is sustained until a punchline that touches on the hollowness of it all.
That is taken up by the next relationship “Transactions” between a prostitute and her client whose fantasy is that they are an old married couple with no desire for sex.
“I just want to feel normal for ten minutes,” the client laments to the prostitute he is paying to wear an extremely unrevealing nightdress and woolly bed socks.
In keeping with the move back to the great fringe of the South, “Saturday Night Brighton, Sunday Morning Portslade” ventures beyond the heterosexual and to the outer reaches of Brighton for what tantalisingly might be more than a one-night stand.
Finally, “Interpreter” takes us away from the personal to the political with a meeting between the ambassador of the fictional Luketia and the United States. Flanked by security in Aviator sunglasses and suits, they are set apart by their footwear – ultra-polished for the U.S. representative, less-so for the Luketian.
Squeezed in between is the interpreter, desperately translating as polite civilities make way for getting down to “bronze tacks” to highly-colourful swearing that earns him the sack from both sides and leads to a complete breakdown in relations.
Given the state of world-politics, it could be unsettling, but in the quasi-fantasy world of these morning playlets, the perfect format for starting the day, we emerge sanguine and amused.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • comedy, theatre, year 2025 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, comedy, theatre