“Together on stage Matthew Boston (as Houghton) and Daniel Llewelyn-Williams (as Higgins) are as perfectly matched as gin and tonic, pie and gravy, fish and chips. They breathe life into Park’s script the way a hurricane wafts a palm tree.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Two novel writers, both alike in indignity, in fair and foul competition through the streets of an unnamed metropolis where we lay our scene. From ancient grudge break to hysterical new mutiny. Where bad blood makes thought and deed unclean.

Brian Parks is a former Arts & Culture editor of ‘The Village Voice’ and former chairman of its Obie Awards. Parks is a multiple Fringe-First-winning playwright celebrated for his cerebral scripts and gorgeous dialogue. He can turn a phrase like Josiah Wedgewood could turn a pot. Awards offer up a rich seam of comic potential from which Parks has mined much ore like a Tolkeinein dwarf on a mission in Moria. His premise, two catty novelists trapped in the shortlist sack of a book festival and writer’s award, provides an hour’s stage traffic of furiously fast farce. 

This ore in turn has been smashed, and refined in the heated crucible of Assembly George Square’s The Crate by Flying Bridge Theatre, whose previous EdFringe triumph was CJ Hopkins’ ‘Horse Country’. Together on stage Matthew Boston (as Houghton) and Daniel Llewelyn-Williams (as Higgins) are as perfectly matched as gin and tonic, pie and gravy, fish and chips. They breathe life into Park’s script the way a hurricane wafts a palm tree.

There are times I recall to mind the 5th episode of Season 5 of ‘Frasier’ – the only time the classic sitcom was filmed on location. Like Houghton and Higgins, Fraiser and his brother race across the city in a series of increasingly chaotic misadventures. Unlike the alfresco episode of the ‘90s TV show, the happenings onstage in 2023 are consistently flawless as the tension builds. There is never a dull moment. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be that frog in that slowly boiling pot of water, immerse yourself in Margarett Perry’s direction.

Under the comedy, there are several Tardis’ worth of drama and character development. As self-doubt creeps in like revolutionaries through an open window at the Winter Palace, Boston and Llewelyn-Williams reveal and peel back their characters’ layers speaking to those vulnerabilities and sufferings of which the human condition is made. Few humans can suffer under heaven more than assistant director, Natalie Tell, as the tech. She’s got 220 cues and not one of them is missed, the knowing audience knows how hard she has worked – she’s smashed it out of the Brian Parks, helping to make ‘Shortlist’ the comedy sensation of EdFringe ‘23.

Come for the clash of egos. Stay for the merry music of mayhem. Get your dust jackets on and go see this!

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