Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

What is it to devote your life to a difficult, physically gruelling and  futile pursuit for which there is apparently no public demand? Trust a clown to be obsessed with that question.

Californian Bill O’Neill plays both of the Amazing Banana Brothers, staging a sideshow-style spectacle in which caped, eyepatch-wearing daredevil Kevin Calamity promises to slip on 1,000 banana skins in the hour with the aid of his sibling sidekick, Joey Insanity.

What an extravaganza Calamity promises. Better than some 25-year-old talking about their anxiety, he insists, deriding so many of the other Fringe shows on offer. A huge bin full of bananas takes centre stage as Calamity prowls the space, asserting his alpha-male dominance by marking his territory in the traditional bestial way before demonstrating the first few of his elaborate falls.

However, not only has he never yet successfully hit the 1,000 – leading to quite a substantial number of refunds – he has devoted years of his life to pursuing the ultimate pratfall - The Prestige Slip – which has become his very own Moby Dick.

It turns out Joey is very much less enthusiastic about the whole act, in which he’s largely sidelined. So when it turns out he has to complete it on his own, it triggers all manner of traumas about the toxic relationship with his domineering older brother that crushed his ambitions like … well a banana. He tries to plaster on a happy face and let the show go on – alpha males don’t get floored by anything like grief – but it’s an existential battle.

That sounds intense, and it is. Especially if you are the audience member recruited to play the absent authoritarian sibling. But it’s also great fun, with the slapstick of the slips just the tip of the sloppy iceberg. Bananas are reimagined into all manner of props, grenades, spaghetti and, of course, guns, and many of the scenes are viscerally messy.

O’Neill’s a mesmerisingly chaotic performer, playing things loose but clearly in far more control of the madness than it appears. Crowd work is faultless, and he’s happy to improvise with whatever the room throws at him without losing track of the narrative or the energy.

Amid all the mayhem, the hand of director Natalie Palamides – whose own breakthrough came from filling the stage with smashed foodstuffs, in her case eggs – can be keenly felt. There’s always more going on than meets the eye and every time you feel you’ve got a handle on the shape of the show it slips away into an unexpected direction. Maybe there’s 1,000 of those slips in this funny, outlandish and unpredictable hour.

Review date: 25 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard