Broken English

With Nat Luurtsema

More Dan Antopolski videos

Dan Antopolski's surreal won him the BBC New Comedy Award in 1998 as well as Perrier Award nomination in 2001. Dan has performed at the usual comedy clubs as well as international comedy festivals, with appearances at Montreal, Melbourne and New York.

And as an actor, Dan has starred in the BBC Two sci-fi spoof Hyperdrive as technical officer Jeffers and appeared in the Da Vinci Code movie as Jesus

Jigsaw: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Pleasance Courtyard

This sketch threesome (Dan Antopolski, Tom Craine, Nat Luurtsema) fit sketches around themselves, and not vice-versa, while their easy charm goes a long, long way to lift individually enjoyable sketches into a satisfying whole.

This ease is underlined by the way the three morph into scenes: often using the space they ended up in the last sketch as their starting point for their next one. Having a screen decorated with an logo that gives them a kind of New Avengers identity, rather than using the wings for changes, also gives them a sophisticated zip.

Without getting fixated on surreal concepts, analogous skits, interpersonal shenanigans or an overarching narrative, the trio are free to fly through a landscape of characters with unexpected behavioural quirks. There's the man who dupes people into getting a semen sample from him, the therapist who slyly uses funk music to help his patients (carried off with a convincing amount of loopyness and not overdone), and a sex addict friend who can't resist making juvenile ginger motions to simulate sex…

What's refreshing is that, for the most part, the characters are all low-status, no newsreaders, no motivational speakers, no policemen or detectives; Jigsaw’s collectively warm and casual style wouldn’t suit pompousness or self-importance.

There’s limited off-the-ball spontaneity, but when it does come –for example in response to three of the front row leaving for the loo – it is all the more impactful for its authenticity.

It’s rare to see performers have so much fun without enforced corpsing, and the simplicity of the ideas must make them fun to perform rather than dreading some very clever-clever set piece that has to be delivered off pat every night.

Perhaps the most complicated set piece is where Craine and Luurtsema have to explain why Antopolski’s pet mouse has died. The chain of events proves great fun and it must make it a joy to deliver each night, without it ever sounding convoluted.

Easy, breezy and sometimes quite cheesy, Jigsaw are a refreshing Fringe stop among shouty sketch and theme-strangled stand up.

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Saw him at Late and Live on Sunday. He did a great set and then his rap about McDonalds absolutely blew the roof off. Then he and American comic Des Bishop did a sort of rap-off and Dan did a bit from one of last year's raps (which I had seen) but it was great second time. Top notch comic!

Duncan, August 2009

Has a good rap about sandwiches. Anyone heard it? I reckon it'd kill at The Glee.

Brendon Burns, June 2009

Thank you Takk for that full account, detailing every nuance of that forgettable but now immortalised gig. You may wish to know that in the Cardiff Glee the following week I repeated the trick - cold and yet irresolute, as if distracted by trying to translate my ideas into your language Knuckle-draglish. However my rap about sandwiches is not bad - instead it is good. You are bad: you smell, you are ugly, have no money, you cannot even type the word Tall, which is a stupid name in any case. Look, anyone can write anything on this comments page: wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee. Chortle, you better put in all those wees: this is my work. Thank you.

Dan Antopolski, May 2009

Saw him at Birmingham Glee Club and, frankly, he was pretty awful. Either he was trying too hard to be too clever or his delivery was totally off (both in my honest opinion). Still, he perservered (with little success it had to be said). His rap about sandwiches was, well, just embarrassing. His anecdotes about his world were just not believable - for example when he recalled a situation where his two kids were asking him to sing the song about the brown man and the yellow man while travelling on the tube, his delivery meant it was hard to believe that he actually had two kids thus rendering the gag useless. Only a throw-in line about raping a tramp raised any sort of reaction from what had proved a pretty jovial audience who either were too polite or too bored to even bother heckling him. That kind of summed him up really.

Takk, May 2009

Delightful slightly off-kilter material. Absurdly good - Don't be daunted when he reads from his 'novel'. I did notice that some members of the audience in Portsmouth were not laughing but they were clearly fools.

Kitty Cakebread, April 2009

Very funny, his rap about sandwiches is amazing.

Adam, August 2008

Saw Dan at the Underbelly and it was absolutely superb definitely not be missed at the festival this year!

Wei, August 2008

Saw him live today at the recording of the BBC Radio 2 show Out to Lunch. His 5 or so minute slot seemed perfect for him. He got good laughs, and seemed to be the highlight of the show. It appears he may have found something that truly works well for him.

Dan Arlington, April 2006

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