Tim & Andy: an adventure, is an amiable comedy about an odd couple, who are not Neil Simon-like grumpy middle-aged men but a couple of twenty year-olds sharing a flat in Wellington. Tim is a would-be actor; he would be one if he could get off the couch in front of the TV.  Andy, who works at Subway, is bossed about by Tim until he lands a job as the front man for a Subway TV campaign with national, even international fame and fortune beckoning.

Part of the fun of the comedy is that the television excerpts are played out on a TV screen at the back of the set in which Michael Trigg plays assorted characters including a duck while Joseph Moore’s Andy gives his all, which is not very much, for Subway and Nic Sampson’s Tim seethes with jealousy.

It’s an unpretentious comedy with a convoluted plot (hallucinatory sequences/TV series and ads) about friendship performed with a rough and ready charm and it creates laughter which is what the festival is all about.

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The opening visual gag, which subverts our reflex ‘oh no – groan’ expectations, alerts us that Tim & Andy may just be something more than a standard, seen-it-all-before comedy about slacker flatmates. And it is.  

Tim (Nic Sampson) is the deeply flawed, own-worst enemy, wannabe actor and freeloading flatmate from Hell. Andy (Joseph Moore) holds the lease courtesy of a mum he’s trying to break free from, works at subway and seems to have some sense that the time has come to make something of his life. Michael Trigg plays assorted incidental characters and animals.

All three actors are clearly talented, extracting comedy by staying true to their characters, touching truthful emotional nerve-ends, demanding empathy from an audience they are clearly in tune with, and exhibiting a sure sense of timing.  

For quite some time I feared we were getting a shopping list of fairly amusing but relatively random attitudes and events – a missing doorknob used by Tim as an excuse to stay at home; a TV soap called Passion Peak; a false moustache; Andy’s secret home-based radio station and his dilemma with a wheelchair-bound wannabe girlfriend; much ado about Subway and its national ad campaign … While there is much to laugh and smile at on the way, as the styles of delivery range from real to surreal, I fear nothing much is accumulating.

But I’m wrong. As their hour enters its final quarter, there are lots of pay-offs from what they’ve set up. On the way we are treated to some quite inspired verbal outpourings, mostly from the mouth of Tim (e.g. "See how the Prince scrapes crumbs from his beard for the peasants to fornicate in") and throwaway gags ("The elderly? Are they still around?"). And there’s a great dub song: ‘Get your foot-long on’ (promoting a Subway sandwich).

The ending, which doesn’t really work for me, brings them back to the slacker status quo. But the fact that I believe enough to care is a plus. I look forward to more work from this team, hopefully exploring a more interesting theme.

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