Gurning after a bad joke doesn’t make it better: that’s why Christopher Eccleston isn't Dr Who anymore.
Billed as a real-life graphic novel, the cast stand behind microphones as comic panels are shown behind them and a foley artist makes effects, all accompanied by a live piano. It’s meant to capture the Golden Age of American radio when Superman was shouting “up, up, and away” and it at least it achieves this by being bloody awful.
The script is utterly baffling in its banality. The entire show has the same beat: character goes somewhere, other character tells them to do something, character does that, then deus ex machina. The plot is paper-thin but also manages to be amazingly difficult to follow. Twin Infinity is actually the third part in a trilogy but this isn’t made clear in the marketing. The show expects you to have a working knowledge of the first two acts.
Characters are introduced left, right and centre, with no explanation of who they are and we are expected to care about them. There is an entire subplot that revolves around knowing who a twin sister is but only the name is mentioned and nothing else. At first, I thought it was maybe a bit of trolling, like turning into a serial midway through, but it’s bad writing and unclear marketing to blame.
The show is littered with jokes so lame I could feel the audience squirm in embarrassment. The humour on display is so basic that it rarely follows any of the rules. This stuff might fly at comic-con but a Fringe audience is going to be way sharper. The problem is compounded by the actors and the others on stage constantly gurning after every lame duck. Gurning after a bad joke doesn’t make it better: that’s why Christopher Eccleston isn't Dr Who anymore.
It’s also far too long at an hour and a half. If I had paid for a ticket, I would have walked out when it passed an hour. I wish I had because in the last act they manage to introduce an ethnic sidekick that’s so bad and so embarrassing it would make Spike Milligan blush.
There is nothing to recommend this show: it’s shallow, racist, and puerile.
