Fringebiscuit

The Jack Studio is strewn with cardboard boxes taped in craft paper, pink tinsel trims, a washing line of candid photos & a sheet-fort pitched at its centre. It’s a childlike den fitting for a Gen Z woman who feels stalled between & adulthood. In ‘Eat. Sleep. Ruminate. Repeat’, the stage is as crowded as the thoughts its protagonist can’t escape…

Jaylie () obsesses over an ambiguous social encounter from years ago, replaying & critiquing it endlessly. From this ruminative death spiral emerges “Jaylie 2.0”: a sleeker, savvier alter-ego, the Brad Pitt to her Edward Norton in this lo-fi . Is it confusing that they’re both called Jaylie & Jaylie 2.0? Yes, friends, it is… 😭

Unlike Fight Club (26-year-old spoiler incoming), Jaylie knows her new pal isn’t real. Still, 2.0 promises to reinvent her through makeovers, dance lessons, internet quizzes & pep-talks. The problem? These plot tropes feel superficial, akin to killing time onstage instead of digging into character. The final scene, which sees Jaylie bid farewell to 2.0 in favour of renewed self-esteem, is an tidy reversal that leaves logical holes. Why can some intrusive thoughts be dismissed at will while others remain inescapable?

That said, there are incisive moments: in Jaylie’s personal quiz, every outcome = “they hate me”, a gag that perfectly captures the fatalism of toxic thought patterns. Longwinded convos have surprising candour, exposing the bleak humour of anxiety—knowing you’re stuck doesn’t free you from its trap… 🔁

The comedy gives broad, early-2000s sitcom vibes — you can almost hear the laugh-track — but the acting is a gift. Roisin Kernan’s 2.0 has the breezy assurance of a , mixing sincerity & humour in a slightly heightened combo that recalls the uncanny valley of an AI chatbot. Wayling, meanwhile, has a Catherine Parkinson-like knack for finding cringe, making every beat feel spiky & real. Together they wring poignancy from tropes, grounding contrived scenarios in lived truth…

The play may be uneven, but its revealing moments truly move us. In the end, it’s not the script, but the performances that slay. 3/5

Stans may get a bad rep thanks to Eminem, but ’ memoir of his rise to standom hits different. A STAN IS BORN! is a solo musical comedy where diva worship becomes survival strategy…

Picture it: 8-year-old Alexis is suddenly yeeted from multicultural NYC to rural Germany. The language? A mystery. The culture? Confusing AF. The fear? Social su***de 😵. Our rainbow-fish-out-of-water quickly realises that to assimilate he’ll have to fake a passion—for football (& maybe learn German🇩🇪 )…

It turns out, masking one’s entire personality is (spoiler) not a winning strategy. Luckily, when things hit peak bleak, a fairy godmother/music teacher swoops in to introduce Alexis to Céline. Dion. The gateway diva. , a stan is born…

Alexis embarks on a glorious deep dive into the discographies of Mariah, Whitney, Gaga & baddies beyond. But it’s bigger than the music. Cycling through gestures, imitations & merch tees that double as lecture slides, Alexis learns to embody-ody-ody fabulosity…

But just as his confidence starts to shimmer, reality claps back. A fumble on the field leads to Alexis’s crush hurling a slur in front of the whole squad. It’s the kind of humiliation no hairflip can deflect. Beneath the upbeat storytelling is a painful truth: Alexis is still deeply lonely. Their obsession with mirrors a desire to be closer to their own. Beneath the camp, the ache is real… 🥺

Still, you can’t keep in the corner. Alexis’s glow up from oddball to finding community is a full-body shimmy of joy. The crowd work, with riffs on pop culture politics—Nicole Scherzinger’s MAGA moment, Rita Ora’s q***rbaiting, Nicki Minaj’s bi “phase”—isn’t schtick; it’s a reminder that fans & idols sustain each other symbiotically. A singalong of “I’m a Diva” cements that community spirit… 🎶

Then comes a sincere, if baffling question: where are all the ***r male pop icons? We’re confused—were George Michael, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie & Elton John just a fever dream?? If so, send us back to sleep…

That said, is the ultimate self-love letter. The songs, vibes & message are nourishing. By the end, we’re all . 4/5

’s ‘I Killed My Roommate’ opens with a confession: she’s killed Susie, the flatmate from hell. What follows is an escalating pressure cooker of everyday micro-aggressions—slow walkers, expired railcards, passive-aggressive post-it notes, etc—in a show that does its best to justify the one thing that definitely none of us has ever daydreamed about, never…🙊

Structurally, the play takes a classic record-scratch, “you’re probably wondering how I got here” approach, with Liv recounting The Worst Day Ever. (We’d say Susie’s was objectively worse, but c’est la morte...)

The set-up is clean & well-paced, relying on Pickford’s crisp observational to sketch a chorus of secondary characters in fast cuts. Her physical bits (the eternal battle with a stuck hoodie; the awkward choreography of trying to p**s in a train loo 😭) are perfectly timed & get big, knowing laughs…

The show favours neat segmentation: direct address anchors the narrative while sound punctuates beats. A GP hold-music gag is absolutely standout, functioning as both joke & score. Elsewhere, reliance on pre-recorded voices smooths transitions but sometimes flattens the comedy—we’d say Pickford’s excellent physicality easily beats the voiceover. As the plot deepens & the characters multiply, we yearn for more variety in their depiction—or the occasional live foley—to add texture without breaking pace…

What ‘I Killed My Roommate’ nails 💯 is catharsis. Simultaneously stand-up & meltdown, it captures the sense of screaming into the void for anyone who’s been told to calm down, smile more, or simply endure life’s petty humiliations 😖Less a tragedy than a , it teases the terrifying truth that just one more delayed train or misplaced stool sample might be enough to push any of us over the edge…

It’s a clever premise, ably performed, if not yet fully mined for its theatrical depth. And it’s absolutely, definitely not an instruction manual…😈3/5

What’s true, what’s embellished, what’s outright invented? With you’ll never quite know—& that’s half the fun.

From the Darwin-esque discovery of her dad’s p***s (yes, we’re keeping this ) to her mother’s Lady Macbeth-like schemes to top the school social hierarchy, Big, If True is stand-up spun into an utterly delish sesh…☕️

’s excitably warm, conspiratorial delivery kicks any performer/audience barrier to the curb. Instead, her fast-paced patter feels akin to being pulled into a pr***en where no tale is too mortifying to recount & the extended backstory is both a complete meander & totally necessary…💯

From the outset, we’re privy to the inside jokes. Buchner’s full of ***r joy, yet happy to drop the deets of the boyfriends she dabbled in & p***ses she was disappointed by (not her dad’s, dw…💀) Is her cyclist fiancée anything like ? No, but the nickname sticks—at least until the conceit slips & we learn her name—accidentally, or was it? Who can tell?

The almost-true, could-be-true & pray-it’s-true blend in anecdotes of her parents’ inappropriately-themed high-school house parties & her mum’s knack for Machiavellian pettiness—there’s real affection here, even when the punchlines sting.

The hour bounces between sharp observation & familial caricature in an informal mishmash of stories, held together by a heartwarming thread—her upcoming nuptials. Her mother looms large: a South African 🇿🇦 powerhouse who can drop divorce papers at a rehearsal dinner without missing a beat, or indeed, dessert—drawn not as a villain but as an epic anti-heroine, Wilhelmina Slater–iconic in her audacity (allegedly)… 💅

It’s this blend of specificity & exaggeration that makes the show sparkle. Identity, migration, class, neurodivergence, q***r domesticity—all are baked into the backdrop, but never the headline, letting the comedy land without didactic weight. What remains is an hour that passes by in a heartbeat, irreverent & irresistibly charming. 5/5

’s Phobia is a masterclass in slick sketchcraft, fronted by uncannily in-sync identical twins Patrick & Hugo McPherson. The premise is simple but irresistible: audience members submit their deepest fears & Pear fold them into an hour of high-precision chaos. Scared of tsunamis? 🌊 Picture one… on a beach. Haunted by clowns? 🤡 Imagine one… on a beach. What could feel like cheap gags instead becomes the pulse of a show that never falters…

The brothers lean into the obvious gimmick—the twin thing, the towering height—but they’re too sharp to let it end there. Every sketch is drilled to choreography-level tightness, yet never feels robotic. Their timing is ruthless: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it absurdity lands with the same force as a five-minute set piece. Audience wrangling, whether orchestrating a doomed maraca cue 🎶 or baiting us with false set-ups, is handled with a finesse that borders on witchcraft 🪄.

The writing is razor-clean, balancing modern bite with curiously retro punchlines. A Princess Diana gag? A 9/11 zinger? ✈️ Gen Z lads running with late-90s references creates an odd but intriguing cultural lag—comedy dressed in hand-me-downs, yet it still works. It’s less about originality of premise than ex*****on: a well-oiled laugh machine that proves commercial sketch can still be joyous when done this well…

What lingers isn’t the politics (besides some brief riffs on bisexuality, there isn’t any), nor any grand thesis or throughline—it’s the sheer professionalism. Pear are funnier than sketch troupes twice their size (numerically, not vertically), transcending novelty by being impeccably prepared & unflappably in sync. You’ll leave grinning, not at all cured of your worries, but certain you’ve seen one of the best sketch shows at . 5/5 🍐