Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Don’t use the c-word to describe Couplet’s comedy: cute. The married couple double act have a song that describes just how much they hate that description, as they feel it demeans their craft. 

But the fact they had to write the track in the first place indicates that they are well aware just how sweetly adorkable they come across on stage.

Initially the atmosphere is, indeed, cloyingly twee as they sing their cheesy introduction song with the vibe of children’s entertainers, interspersed with such obviously rehearsed dialogue, down to every fake little chuckle. 

And if anyone’s going to start singing winsomely about their ‘simple pimple love’, sickbags should really be provided. Their biggest domestic row concern laundry and even a call-and-response of the f-word is jaunty. Sod off back to America with your optimistic happiness, this is Britain and we crave misery…

Luckily things do get a little more interesting, which coincides with the pair revealing they are not the vanilla heterosexual couple they first appear.  After they started dating, Micah O’Konis (the guitar-playing half of the duo) came out as non-binary, something of a relief to Marnina Schon (violin, unusually) who’d always considered herself queer.

They joke that the show is a Trojan Horse to sneak LGBTQI+ issues into a mainstream show, but there might be something in that, with the normality of their happy marriage concealing an unexpected message to an audience who’d come for jolly clap-along songs not to query gender orthodoxy.

They get some mileage out of that, for example by mock-assuming the audience would be so shocked by them being so progressive that when they chose a rabbi to marry them, SHE – gasp! – had tattoos.

How they worked towards taking gender out of an otherwise traditional ceremony is an interesting yarn, and the show gets an extra dramatic twist when calamity strikes their perfect Los Angeles venue.

By this point even the cynical will be on board, as beyond those cutesy introductions the pair have a decent story to tell. While the show might have started feeling artificial –  and they never fully escape the theatre-kids energy – in the end the joy is real.

Review date: 7 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy