If you’ve spent any time watching sketch comedy on YouTube, you’ll be familiar with BriTANicK, aka Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, an American sketch comedy duo from Atlanta, USA, who have a long list of credits, including as writers on Saturday Night Live and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Between them, they have enough comedy awards to fill a cabinet.
On stage, they are a classic pairing of ‘the funny one and the dumb one, ‘ though we’ll leave it as an exercise for the audience to determine which is which. This is a very clever, fourth-wall-breaking sketch comedy that starts with some pretty simple gags and a upping of stakes. Brian introduces himself normally; Nick one-ups with an admission of an unhealthy interest in puppets and so on.
Slowly but surely, these dumb gags stack up against into each other, building the bizarre world of BriTANicK. It seems like this is a sketch comedy show with lore. (Though you don’t need to know anything about the show beforehand; in fact, it’s better if you come in completely cold). The pacing is steady, silly and deeply dumb. Throwaway lines set the stage for bigger, sillier jokes down the line; this is an expertly scripted show performed by two comedians who are at the top of their game.
BriTANicK: Dummy is a hilariously weird show that doesn’t try to be about anything, though it has themes about identity and childhood throughout. There are also several strains of meta-humour; we get some fun jokes about the way the industry handles reviews, as well as a couple of well-hidden insider jokes on the nature of comedy itself. Knowing, clever and unrelenting, Dummy is a masterclass in keeping an audience laughing all the way through a how. It’s a show so funny that you may forget you’re a person and are, in fact, some sort of laughing machine. Daft, fun, and recommended.
You can find out more about BriTANicK here.
