I love Wendy’s milkshakes.
They are disgusting as it’s just three litres of pig lard made to look presentable, but I love them. Sometimes you ask the girl in pink over the counter what she put in your shake and all she can do is shrug her shoulders. So much for breaking the ice.
Ever had vanilla ice cream, Mountain Dew, Subway, weed, T Pain, ducks, maybe a squirrel, some oats and three blokes thrown into a blender? No? Please do not try it Salient does not take responsibility for those idiotic readers) and don’t worry, you did not miss out much with Tim and Andy: An Adventure.
Tim and Andy: An Adventure is a devised comedy where there is no doorknob on the outside of their flat. A useless actor, Tim, uses this as an excuse to avoid auditions and to stay at home all day watching TV, waiting for his flat mate Andy to come home so he can let him in. Tim is a self-absorbed ass and Andy is a diligent and generous soul who enjoys toiling away at the local Subway sandwich bar, hoping one day to grab the manager’s cap. The hopelessness within which these two lives is shattered when Andy lands a role in a Subway commercial, catapulting him into stardom and Tim into a jealous rage that could end their life-long friendship.
Just like a Wendy’s shake, you know where this is going.
The gags are typical. It is like the first five minutes of Harold and Kumar but extended to last an hour. There are only two really memorable ones, one being a drug trip with a duck, and the other involving T Pain in a rap about subways. I bring this back to my milkshake analogy: the gags do feel like a bunch of random ideas that have just been thrown into the blender but they haven’t been blended well enough. They feel forced.
Thing is, you adore the goofiness of Andy but you really don’t care for Tim because he is just so arrogant. It’s like trying to fight a brick wall, why?! The strength of the characters is not the best anyone has seen – most of the time it feels as annoying as squirrels stealing your Wendy’s.
This is not the best I have seen at Bats, but it is not the worst. As actors, all three are brilliant. They do know how to do slapstick as their timing for each line and gags are just gold. This was the one thing that kept me alive throughout the whole piece. They had the gift to make things work and while you know it’s cheesy and cliché, you are laughing.
The main problem about this production is that there was nothing special about it. While the actors shine, the devised piece is just as interesting as fishing in a pond with no fish. You walk out of Bats giggling but when you wake up the next day it is unlikely that you would remember much from Tim and Andy: An Adventure.
Man, I really want some Wendy’s now.
Tim and Andy: An Adventure
Devised by Tim and Andy
At Bats
May 7 – 10
What’s Hot?
Two new shows are starting at Circa in the couple couple of weeks, The American Pilot and Bone, but I suspect that the true gem might just turn out to be the Tony Award-winning The Last Five Years, opening this thursday at Bats. It’s a musical about a relationship (yerch) which twists time in all sorts of ways (cool!). Definitely worth a look.