Theatre review: The British Idles

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Brash, crass, student-level theatre which takes a sledgehammer to a sensitive political walnut is a staple of the Fringe, and this piece by Liverpool-based graduate company Naughty Corner Productions has its cake and eats it as far as that format is concerned.

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39)

***

Writer-director Callum Forbes has given his five-piece cast a suitably garish bunch of characters to have fun with, a lairy gaggle of thrill-seekers who pine for dates with overweight women, converse with each using soundbites of lairy serial bravado (that’s just the women) and get into love-triangle scraps in well-realised nightclub scenes.

It’s not unreasonable to say that such a show will be a circle of hell for many audiences, but younger attendees in particular will enjoy much of the ugly but well-performed humour, and sadly might empathise with more serious discussion of zero-hour contracts and benefit sanctions. The timeliness of this production is also a virtue, with the divided and antagonistic backdrop of Brexit Britain well echoed in the iconoclastic and destructively anti-establishment humour of the piece.

Until today, 8:40pm.