2011 Edinburgh Fringe
Christmas For Two review
Friends With You might sound like an uplifiting, inviting sort of show title but don't be fooled - it's a bleak, bleak world that the characters dreamt up by sketch duo Christmas For Two appear to inhabit. The show opens up with a skit in which a perfectly ordinary-seeming job-hunter is advised that she is most suited to the 'role' of a rapist - and if anything things just get more unsettling from there.
That's not to say there isn't bit of fun to be had along the way for the audience members - there's just not a whole lot of it about for the characters. Sarah Campbell and Amy Hoggart have written for the BBC and from this show you can see why programme makers would want to harness the off-beat and off-kilter ideas they come up with.
A large proportion of the ideas on show here are genuinely creative and odd - it's just that the execution of those ideas isn't always successful, or doesn't go far enough. A soothsayer who makes thunderously dull predictions is a neat idea but doesn't progress very far, for example, and sketches involving a couple stuck in their 'Fish Monday' ways probably relies too heavily on just being bizarre, rather than having any laugh out loud moments.
Some sketches do get the balance right though. In particular, a couple of downtrodden holiday reps provide great material, with the erstwhile party animals slowly unravelling before our eyes as they desperately try to flog us tickets for some godforsaken foam party. With a carvery. It makes great use of Campbell's flair for physical comedy, and Hoggart gives her character a fittingly broken look - overall the show could just do with a few more sketches of this calibre.
Christmas For Two: Friends With You listing
