City Paper, Philadelphia, 2001
Philadelphia City Paper
Fringe Shorts Short reviews of Fringe shows continuing through the festival’s final days.
September 14-21, 2000 fringe No No No
YES YES YES Ridiculusmus, Cabaret Theatre, 211 Race St., 215-413-1318
For about two minutes, there’s hope. YES YES YES begins with a charming sight gag. Jon Hough and David Woods (the two writer- performers of Ridiculusmus) have a certain droll flair. The initial set up (which includes audience confrontation, madcap play between the comics and asks questions like “What is truth?” and “Can a feller reclaim blood from lice?”) is so weird that we can’t help being intrigued. Had YES YES YES followed this path (or really, gone anywhere) it might have been the kind of show that Fringe does best: edgy, unconventional and impossible to imagine anywhere else. But Hough and Woods are weird – period.
YES is empty and sophomoric, a poster child for Fringe at its most desperate, a pathetic search for novelty at any cost. The show goes nowhere, and takes more than an hour to do it. This is not to say there’s no story. Au contraire – there’s so much going on it’s impossible to keep track. Mostly there are vignettes involving two men (Mr. H. and Mr. Chatterjee) who quarrel and cajole. Supposed hilarity is milked from Raj stereotypes of the sort Peter Sellers used to do so well. We get the feeling that Ridiculusmus wants to be a kind of homage to British comedy including such worthy mentors as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Beyond the Fringe, even Benny Hill. But those shows used stereotypes and antic farce as a means for social commentary. They were also funny. YES is pointless craziness for its own sake, and agonizingly witless. The send-ups of British/Indian culture aren’t anchored into anything larger. The humor quickly turns scatological and there’s lots of gross-out stuff. The guys throw things, spit and drool and grab their crotches. The single comic principle invoked seems to be that “foreign is funny.” Indeed, in the last few minutes the show offers an extended monologue drawn from radio ads for British food. Brand names are evoked: Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco. The audience chortles, but I wonder how many of them have any idea what they’re laughing at?
Ah yes, the audience. I would say it was about equally divided between those who suffered in stony silence, hoping desperately to avoid physical confrontation with the performers; and those who couldn’t get enough, howling at every non-joke. I suppose there’s a lesson here: with sufficient hype, anything can find a cult following.
David Anthony Fox
Related pages:
.. South London Press, (interview), 2001 .. Edinburgh Guide, Edinburgh 2000