The Friendship Experiment

Underbelly
5-29 August, 15.05

Big Wow Theatre (of Dark Grumblings fame) might have pulled off the biggest coup of the Fringe. Having spent the first half of their new show irritating the hell out of me, these two Northern “knobbers” (their word, not mine) had me wide eyed in awe and admiration by the end of the hour. And not just at the buckets of sweat they perspired.

Audience suggestions help set the scene in an improvised piece about the meeting of two friends after a long separation. But it soon emerges the friendship experiment at hand is as much between the performers as their characters. Silly faces and slapstick abound, until the layers of the onion are peeled back to reveal something of unexpected delight.

“Turning pissing about into an artform” is the Big Wow philosophy. They achieve it here – and then some – with a final scene that’s almost Nolanesque in its logic and ten times more entertaining than Inception.