Theatre review by Steve Bennett at the Brighton Fringe

Basically a classic farce with modern sensibilities, How Will I Know? is a brisk single-scener set in an American apartment on October 31, the day before a big immigration interview.

Mark is grilling his best friend Brooke and his Latin lover Diego with all the stern, officious rigour they can expect in the morning. They have undergone a sham marriage so Diego can get into the country - but if they’re exposed as having committed a federal crime, deportation and jail awaits.

So the jeopardy is high, and the comic tension ratcheted up as the three-way relationship comes under increasing stress. And just to fray their tempers even more, the trick-or-treaters keep calling. The repetitiveness of this device is played as a joke, but it comes to be an irritant. But how else to remove one person from the otherwise claustrophobic scene so plot points can be advanced, unbeknown to them.

The cast under director Kanika Clayton, manage the ever-changing tone very well, as the script by German Munoz, himself a Mexican, veers from broad farce, personal intensity and slapstick stupidity. Niccolò Curradi is a scene-stealer as the mercurial Mexican, irritating his friends but charming his way out by joking with an impish grin: ‘But I’m sexy, though,’ whenever challenged. Neil Allen is the highly-stung, very particular Mark, a vaguely authoritative figure around which the stresses develop (and with a convincing American accent you don’t normally find in his native Isle of Wight).

At just 40 minutes, the journey is brief, and ultimately inconsequential - rather like a sitcom episode. But this one is particularly fraught; the plotting and scripting is tight, the sexual and dramatic tension high, and there’s rarely a wasted moment as the laughs come fast from a cast on top of their strong characters and vibrant script.

• How Will I Know? has now finished its run at the Brighton Fringe

Review date: 8 May 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett