Brighton Fringe comedy review

It shouldn’t be a surprise when a comedy sketch show is actually funny. But Hill and Jones spend so long on low-hanging fruit, so long on verbose set-ups and repetitive punchlines and so long on cheap indulgence that when a skit comes along that elicits a laugh it is an unexpected delight. 

That they can do it shows promise, even if they are so unfocused that it remains a rarity. A big part of the issue is that they are throwing everything on the stage to see what sticks, with the result they lack a personality as an act. What makes a quintessential Hill and Jones sketch? You wouldn’t know from this…

The highlight is a brilliantly unexpected bit of slapstick physical comedy and separately, some enjoyable nonsense with a cardboard cut-out of Tom Cruise that refuses to remain upright, which succeeds as it’s looser, more spontaneously chaotic, than the rest of the show.

Cruise is here as part of the recurring premise that they’ve tried to recruit various A-listers to help with the sketches. They then insert themselves into real car-crash interviews as if they’d angered the stars with they asinine questioning. But the lines aren’t strong enough and the idea doesn’t really land once, let alone three times.

With old-school sensibilities, there are not expanding the frontiers of comedy, loving double entendres and 1970s-style cross-dressing. ‘We’ve had no fanny all day’ is an early line. Fanny is the name of the stage manager, it’s then revealed. That’s the level. 

The pair are certainly likeable, leaning into the corniness – especially in a sweet shop sketch that layers on the puns, triumphing by sheer force of numbers. And they have a decent chemistry –  Ryan Hill trying to take the show seriously and  Ben Jones the undermining  idiot, true to the age-old dynamic -  even if their acting isn’t always the most naturalistic.

But they need much stronger discipline, editing dead weight set-ups, reducing the amount of time we’re looking at a screen, going beyond the easy gag and simply figuring out what they are all about, rather than being a pale imitation of a bunch of forebears.

Skits about woke bingo calls (‘two fat ladies, you can’t say that’) is an unexciting premise driven into the ground, and them acting out frustrating online experiences as if in real life is not a patch on the similar sketches Stevie Martin makes with Lola-Rose Maxwell. A guide to pregnancy is juvenile, but not in the good way.

Towards the end they straight out steal David Armand’s old interpretive dance shtick, even his trademark Torn. He might not be on the circuit and more, but this still feels disrespectful at best. Among their additions is to mime out Come On Eileen, and I think we can all guess what happens there, though the gag works almost because it’s so obvious. 

This is followed by an interminable dance montage. They can dance - well, Hill can - but the very occasional, and very broad, comic interruptions by Jones do not justify this segment which keeps on promising to end, yet stubbornly refusing to do so.

Review date: 26 May 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Rotunda Theatre