Review – FanFiction Comedy
A line up of comedians write fanfictions and then read them aloud in front of an audience. It’s a simple premise, a little weird and even a bit scary if you know even so much as the first thing about fanfiction – but Fanfiction Comedy is hilarious.
Sherlock and Steve from Blue’s Clues team up to solve a brutal murder mystery. A pitch for a film adaptation of Charmed. Iron Man falls in love with his computer butler, JARVIS. Thomas the Tank Engine discovers the horrific reality behind the creation of himself and the other trains. Fanfiction Comedy delivers material from the bizarre to the absurd and it is glorious.
Each show is different, with new stories and special guests every time. Some stories, such as guest-star Tom Ballard’s take on Charmed, the successful 90’s TV drama about a sisterhood of three witches, have been written with meticulous research and knowledge — all of which culminated into a demon delivering a really sick uppercut. Others, such as Heidi O’Loughlin’s Blue’s Clues and Sherlock crossover, were written in a notebook, on stage – and were just as funny. To “mind palace the fuck out of that” has probably now been inducted into most of the audience’s vocabulary for good.
The true strength of Fanfiction Comedy, however, comes from the chemistry of the cast. The discussions following the fanfiction readings were often just as funny as the readings themselves, giving the audience the same kind of laughs you get when you’re watching Star Wars with your best friends, only you stop really watching about an hour in and end up doing your own commentary. You know what I mean. The same way Hamish and Andy are enjoyable because they’re just two mates doing best friend things. It was casual comedy at its best, with members of the audience reduced to squeals of laughter.
It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you enjoy pop culture in any of its forms, Fanfiction Comedy is not a show you want to miss and might even be one you’ll want to see more than once. From those who can tell the difference between Quenya and Sindarin to those who can’t even remember the name of that one ginger kid from Harry Potter, Fanfiction Comedy will have just about everyone laughing so hard that they aren’t actually making human sounds anymore.
Fanficiton Comedy is performing every night until the 20th of April
