Fringe 2009 - FFA 1 - Not Scenes From A Marriage

"You have no business being in treatment!"

2 Fran's

Not Scenes From A Marriage

A madcap comedy with a buncha snappy sketches where this gal and fella are up to their crazy antics: flirtin, fightin, and lotsa tomfoolery!

Well, they're right, it's no Bergman film.

I'm kind of ambivalent about this one. I think their publicity image is actually pretty cool, and funny.

The sketch they did, where a guy is addicted to treatment programs, but isn't actually addicted to anything else like drugs or alcohol, was okay. It was sort of a one joke premise (two jokes if you count his scolding counselor's pronounced lisp), and they played it out well enough. They even got done inside the green light zone of the first 2-1/2 minutes.

To be honest, the thing that put me off was the text on their show postcard. Part of their postcard makes comparisons between the 2 Fran's and Martini & Olive. It doesn't look like it's a quote from past reviews of their work (I could be wrong - I've already been wrong in these recaps and people have called me on it). To me, it looked like the artists themselves were making the comparison, as a way of drawing in audience by linking their act with Martini & Olive's.

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen for a moment - I've seen Martini & Olive. I know Martini & Olive. Martini & Olive are friends of mine. All due respect, you're no Martini & Olive.

Setting aside the fact that Martini & Olive base their schtick around the performance of songs from the disco era, the non-singing part of that comedy act is based on a comedy of pain and humiliation. It's sometimes unsettling to watch, and you feel bad for laughing at it, in a good way. It's a finely honed routine that those two performers have developed over time.

This Fringe preview seems to promise a much more standard issue style of sketch comedy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's not on the same level.

When the Fringe YouTube page has all the Fringe-For-All video clips up (they're in process as I type this), you can look for yourself and decide if it's your kind of sketch comedy.

Their show page