Barry, Brian & Bean – The Full English

The Full English is an hour of riotously silly sketch comedy by UK-based drag kings Barry, Brian, & Bean. Parodying a specific sort of football-loving, Stella-drinking British lad, this show played surprisingly well to an Australian audience. Maybe it’s the Commonwealth cultural similarities, or maybe it’s just that you can’t visit a pub in Melbourne around World Cup season without meeting this kind of Brit. Regardless – this is drag king comedy at its absolute finest. Every sketch felt perfectly timed, and no joke outstayed its welcome. This show was tight! 

The Full English was a surprise win for me. Admittedly: I do often struggle with full-length shows centred around very specific parody characters. Often, I feel that the joke wears thin by about the fifty-percent mark. I cannot emphasise how much this was not the case with The Full English. I could have watched another hour of this show. Importantly, these performers know how to use their characters as a vehicle for comedy, rather than relying on the absurdity of the characters to be the source of comedy. In other words: they’re really damn good at what they do.