A colourful playhouse made from cardboard packing boxes covered in green wallpaper with pink, orange and white elephants, giraffes and ostriches, plus a window painted in with a dark blue sky and a yellow quarter-sun stands beyond a floor cloth with drawings of trains on it, plus some actual cuddly toys, a rubber duck and a large baby’s bottle. 

The Fuq Boiz come in dressed in tuxedos, waving cricket bats. Then a whole lot of full-on, utterly insane, mad shit happens for an hour.  That’s really all you need to know, but I’ll elaborate some more as I feel it’s expected.

This is reimagined classic old-school two-hander sketch comedy par excellence; post-post-post modern theatrical absurdity on a scale not witnessed since, and indeed potentially surpassing, that of the legendary Fry and Laurie. 

Hamish Parkinson is the seasoned, mercurial one who takes smoko breaks and Ryan Richards is the affably nervous one who laughs back when we do.  Together their frenetic ridiculousness is relentless, from symbolically smashing outdated societal attitudes such as racism, sexism and homophobia, to examining the more lateral implications of platitudes like ‘never look a gift horse in the mouth’ and translating them into conceptual character sketches that would leave the Goons scratching their heads.

Along the way – in their verbose, faux-gentlemanly affected repetitive manner – they alternately blow each other’s minds with their ideas for what to call the show, what to make comic scenarios around and what to feverishly do with their lives.  The audience inevitably gets involved as the duo work tirelessly to forge a rapport with their responsive crowd, especially the one individual they manage to convince themselves is not enjoying himself well enough. 

The Boiz narrate each other’s thoughts as they dream up each absurd scene, about horses, bears, bees and pies respectively.  Then once they decide they’ve worked enough, as advised at the top of the show they reward themselves with a romantic date each, leading (spoiler alert) to more thoroughly deranged nonsensical chaos.

In case it’s not clear from the above, they are completely hilarious, even through excessively laboured gags and an unscripted (?) wardrobe malfunction.  Though we may leave entirely uncertain as to What the Fuq just happened, we are nonetheless grateful that it did.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer