Review: BriTANick

There are several alternate reality/dream sequences in Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney’s first Fringe show, and it often feels like one in the audience too. What are these two US comedy stalwarts – writers for Saturday Night Live, lauded by Judd Apatow – doing in an old shipping container outside a lecture theatre?

You can imagine in another life these two would have made a leftfield sitcom and be in pre-production on a superhero film now, but then this post-pandemic era is a great leveller. And the Georgia-formed duo certainly aren't phoning it in, although several guests do phone in along the way. 

BriTANick – confusingly for Brits, it rhymes with 'Titanic' – have been performing together since the mid 2000s, and the dynamic is your classic sensible/wayward, with modern sensibilities. They ask the awkward questions themselves – is it ok for two straight guys to play gay men, in a dating scene? – and admit to being called juvenile, but they mix the cerebral and silly to decent effect. 

Assured performers, the duo aren’t doing anything wildly novel with the sketch format, even referencing a classic Monty Python set-up, and messing with other tropes, but the show concludes in a satisfyingly meta fashion, callbacks aplenty, and is clearly going down well. They can add a successful Fringe to the list of credits.