Original Review:

Jackie van Beek and Jonathan Brugh are two amateurish New Zealand performer who stumble their way through the most puerile, unintelligent collection of below-the-belt sketches in a limp attempt to shock.

But the show, which has previously made not much of an impact at the Edinburgh and Melbourne festivals, is repulsive not for its content, but the way it handles it, and offensive only to those who like decent comedy.

Its jumbled narrative concerns two mentally subnormal siblings who we first encounter as children, wistfully hoping to suck a thousand cocks when they are older to earn their fortune. Within minutes there’s an ill-judged incest scene that has no obvious funny moments, then a Christian porn film, with the catchphrase ‘my arm, your vadge, let’s go’ as a string of used tampons is extracted from the Virgin Mary as if by a gynaecological conjuror. There is a suggestion of gang-raping a woman in a burka, then mimes of oral sex and masturbation, making Johnny’s dick come to life as a sock puppet – which turns out to contain the spirit of Lord Baden-Powell, although they make that idea nowhere near as funny as it sounds.

Now reducing any show to a stark list of its subjects is deliberately unflattering and misleading, and usually used by narrow-minded people calling for bans. But in the case of this feeble show, it’s a fair representation of the dribble of half-formed rag-mag subjects that these two gurning, overacting shock-jocks deliver.

They push all the buttons of gross-out comedy, but with no finesse, aiming for low targets and still missing abysmally. The show’s blurb likes to suggest that it’s breaking taboos and pushing back boundaries – which sound very much like excuses for not being able to raise a laugh even with a simple knob joke.

If just hearing the phrase ‘me love you long time’ has you doubled in hysterics, this is the show for you. If you want your comedy with any higher aspirations at all, stay away.

Away from the filth, the sketches are underwritten, overlong and barely comprehensible as the ill-thought-out mess of a script clunks from one tedious set piece to the next. About three lines in the entire hour raised a smile. At £17.50 for a full-priced ticket, that works out at just under £6 a smirk.

My Brother And I Are Porn Stars is not big and not clever, nor would it ever claim to be. But neither is it funny, joyously stupid or even well executed. It’s just a horrible, horrible mess that will leave you feeling as soiled as watching real porn – but not quite so entertained.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Soho Theatre, London, December 2007