Tag Archives: Simon Lipkin

Brian and Roger

Brian and Roger

★★★★★

Menier Chocolate Factory

Brian and Roger

Brian and Roger – A Highly Offensive Play

Menier Chocolate Factory

Reviewed – 1st November 2021

★★★★★

 

“scales the dizzy heights of funny”

 

“Brian & Roger”, that carries the subtitle a ‘Highly Offensive Play’, opens the Menier Chocolate Factory’s new smaller space, The Mixing Room. It is a world premiere, but its seeds were planted back in 2014 when the writers, Dan Skinner and Harry Peacock, created the characters for a podcast series. “We had no idea if anybody would listen or care” Skinner recently said. Thankfully they did, and it is to theatreland’s immense benefit that the eponymous characters have now made it to the stage.

Firstly. It is not highly offensive. It is ‘highly’ many things though; highly charged, highly outrageous, highly shocking, highly unprincipled, highly shameless and above all it scales the dizzy heights of funny. The ideas are far-fetched, but you’d travel the earth to keep up with them. The premise is bleak but don’t let that put you off. Brian and Roger are two friends (assume a very loose definition of the word ‘friend’) who met at a support group for recently divorced men. Roger was attending because he was genuinely grieving the loss of his marriage; Brian was instructed to attend by his solicitor if he wanted to dodge paying alimony to his ex-wife. Roger needs guidance and support, which Brian willingly supplies, exploiting Roger’s vulnerability to the extreme. Roger is continually coerced into making bad decisions. Played by Skinner himself, it is a brilliant and hilarious portrayal of a man sinking into the depths of humiliation and injury, with a Panglossian gullibility and belief in the deplorable Brian’s intentions. Simon Lipkin is equally sensational as the hard-nosed but similarly desperate Brian who has found the perfect stooge in Roger. Never has such an unlikeable character been so… well… likeable.

We don’t witness the odd couple’s first meeting. In fact, we never see them together at all. The entire piece is played out on their phones – leaving messages for each other. There is one exception – although we still don’t ‘see’ them together as the scene takes place in a complete blackout. I shall reveal no more except to say that it is a brilliantly darkly funny episode.

Darkness is the key. The humour couldn’t be blacker as Skinner and Lipkin chase the extremes of comedy. It gets progressively more outlandish, as do the peripheral unseen characters who nevertheless loom large over the action, whether it is the octogenarian woman whose sofa Roger lives on, the students Brian is forced to shack up with; the ex-wives, the dominatrices, and gangsters. Even a Mongolian mule named after Roger’s wife! Belief is persistently stretched to breaking point by the sheer outrageousness of the plot. At the same time our laughter lines are stretched even further.

David Babani’s direction is slick, with many neat ideas. It is clear that he has worked closely with his design team. Paul Anderson’s lighting conveys mood and location with the flamboyant touch of a mad professor, brilliantly complemented by Timothy Bird’s projected backdrops. Robert Jones’ design is centred around the drab community meeting room where the pair met. Ingeniously and quirkily though, the play is never set there. Instead, the furnishings and video projections are used to convey – among other bizarre settings – an S&M basement, a hospital ICU, train carriages, taxi cabs, a rugged Eastern European Mountain village, abattoirs, Safari parks, airports… you name it. And to say that the use of props is out of the box is a bit of an understatement. The whole combination, topped off with Gregory Clarke’s soundscape, verges on the surreal.

As preposterous as the storyline is, we are somehow still anchored in real life by the sheer natural flow of Harry Peacock and Dan Skinner’s writing. On paper, the idea of spending two hours watching two sad men talk into their phones sounds like torture. But we are rapt. Skinner and Lipkin are stunning. “Brian & Roger – A Highly Offensive Play”: the idea that one wouldn’t want to see it is more offensive.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Nobby Clark

 


Brian and Roger – A Highly Offensive Play

Menier Chocolate Factory until 18th December

 

Show reviews you may have missed in October:
Dumbledore Is So Gay | ★★½ | Online | October 2021
Back To The Future | ★★★★ | Adelphi Theatre | October 2021
Roots | ★★★★★ | Wilton’s Music Hall | October 2021
The Witchfinder’s Sister | ★★★ | Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch | October 2021
Rice | ★★★★ | Orange Tree Theatre | October 2021
The Cherry Orchard | ★★★★ | Theatre Royal Windsor | October 2021
Love And Other Acts Of Violence | ★★★★ | Donmar Warehouse | October 2021
Yellowfin | ★★★★ | Southwark Playhouse | October 2021
Brief Encounter | ★★★ | Watermill Theatre Newbury | October 2021
One Man Poe | ★★★ | The Space | October 2021
Dorian | ★★★★ | Reading Rep Theatre | October 2021
Flushed | ★★★★ | Park Theatre | October 2021
Lights Out | ★★★★ | Pleasance Theatre | October 2021
Night Mother | ★★★★ | Hampstead Theatre | October 2021
Tender Napalm | ★★★★★ | King’s Head Theatre | October 2021
Vinegar Tom | ★★★ | The Maltings Theatre | October 2021

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

First Date

First Date

★★★

Online

First Date

First Date

Online stream from Crazy Coqs

Reviewed – 22nd October 2020

★★★

 

“the memorable songs and the impressive performances carry this funny and relatable take on the dating world”

 

The year is 2020, a pandemic has turned singletons everywhere horny (sound familiar?), and the musical ’First Date’ is here to find out if we can still believe in love!

In the Crazy Coqs bar we meet Aaron (Simon Lipkin) and Casey (Samantha Barks) on a blind date and setting eyes on each other for the first time. Queue a series of fantastically funny songs alighting on all the truisms of first dates from the friend you have lined up to fake an accident to the awkward pauses and who pays the cheque at the end of it all! The pair navigate small talk and their differences, to see whether this could be something. Our two daters are surrounded by a fantastic chorus who pop-up Grecian-esque as bartenders, exes, bad boys and even Google embodied!

The songs, written by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, are consistently brilliant. There are cabaret numbers, comedy numbers, ballads, duets and a lovely five-person opening. Accompanied by a live piano, the songs are well-written, well-sung and all great fun! The script (Austin Winsberg) between songs, however, is not up to the standard of the song writing at all. Whilst there’s some promise in there, it is overly long and slow, and needs some serious tightening up to meet the quality which is so evident in the lyric writing.

The cast are really strong, directed by Dean Johnson. They all boast fantastic voices, brought together with musical direction from John Winstone. Barks and Lipkin sing wonderfully, working hard on a slow script, although lacking in chemistry between them. Some favourite characters in the panopoly that the chorus play include Nick McLean’s Reggie and Danielle Steers’ dead grandma! The shining star of the whole show is Oscar Conlon-Morrey who is irresistibly funny in every role he plays: a feast to watch, even when he is just making comments during the internal (a lovely touch). I could’ve watch him all day.

Unfortunately the quality of the music and performers is let down by the audio (Matt Ide) and videography (Sam Diaz) quality, both of which are wildly inconsistent, so much so that they are disruptive to the piece*. The green screen backdrops are really fun and work really well, but in the space itself the lighting is bizarre and doesn’t respond to lighting changes mentioned in the script, silence buzzes, and it would be impossible to watch this through without regularly adjusting the volume up and down on your television or laptop. Given that it is presented like a film, it needs to have the basic production values of one. It is such a shame, given the quality of the actors and the material.

Production quality aside, the memorable songs and the impressive performances carry this funny and relatable take on the dating world.

 

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography courtesy Lambert Jackson

 

* This show was reviewed on an advance link so sound and video quality may be improved on the released production

 


First Date

Online stream from Crazy Coqs

 

Last ten shows reviewed by Amelia:
Germ Free Adolescent | ★★★★ | The Bunker | October 2019
Before I Was A Bear | ★★★★★ | The Bunker | November 2019
I Will Still Be Whole (When You Rip Me In Half) | ★★★★ | The Bunker | November 2019
My White Best Friend And Even More Letters Best Left Unsaid | ★★★★ | The Bunker | November 2019
Potted Panto | ★★★★ | Southwark Playhouse | December 2019
The Girl With Glitter in Her Eye | ★★½ | The Bunker | January 2020
Essence | ★★½ | The Vaults | February 2020
Flights | ★★★½ | Omnibus Theatre | February 2020
Maliphantworks3 | ★★★★★ | The Coronet Theatre | February 2020
Globaleyes | ★★★★ | Online | September 2020

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews