EDINBURGH 2015 - BWW Reviews: BRENDON BURNS AND COLT CABANA, Stand in the Square, August 14 2015

The noted Australian comic and celebrated American indie wrestler reunite for another month of snarking at the worst of sports entertainment in the show with the longest and most literal title on the Fringe: Brendon Burns and Colt Cabana Sit in a F*cking Yurt at 11pm and Provide Comedy and Commentary to Bad Wrestling Matches. I reviewed the duo's first joint venture in Edinburgh in 2013 in a venue more akin to someone's front room packed full of bar stools. Two years of success later, they have graduated to the dizzy heights of the eponymous yurt!

As before, Brendon, Colt and a guest spend an hour watching clips of wrestling matches and promos, riffing on some of the silliest moments and most epic of fails. The show is interactive - Twitter requests are welcomed and chants appreciated - but not too interactive, as persistent hecklers will find themselves having to deal with an imposing grappler!.

The overall effect is akin to watching silly videos on YouTube with your mates, and evidently the performers agree, with the odd embarrassing anecdote about the more intimate moments of wrestling superstars' sneaking in, followed by belated pleas not to repeat them on social media. Brendon and Colt have great chemistry and an admirable enthusiasm to just go with the flow. Indeed, in this evening's show, the performance was only moments old when the plan was abandoned in favour of Brendon's impressions of the recently disgraced Hulk Hogan and using an audience-provided Sharpie to create a drawn on sixpack, not to mention trying to surpass the questionable skills of such luminaries as "Battle Kat" by executing various gymnastic moves around the tent. To be fair, while the WWE famously said "Don't Try This At Home", they didn't mention anything about trying it in a yurt.

One minor quibble is that the guys often have so much to say about a clip that they end up constantly rewinding clips, to the extent it's easy to get confused about what is going on after viewing a move for the fifth time. Letting a few jokes go for the sake of brevity would have allowed for more clips to be featured during the hour, and everyone would have been delighted if they could have packed in more Scott Steiner promos (a sentence never uttered outside of this context).

One of a number of niche and nerdy productions finding success on the Fringe in recent years, this show attracts a keen and knowledgeable crowd, who know their suplexes from their sharpshooters, and there were evidently some regular attendees in the audience. An admirable gesture to this effect was announced by the duo, where returning audience members can present their full price ticket stub to book another ticket for half price or 2 for the price of 1. It's a great fun show for anyone who has ever enjoyed the incomparable delights of spandex-clad men badly imitating rock stars and yetis.

Brendon Burns and Colt Cabana Sit in a F*cking Yurt at 11pm and Provide Comedy and Commentary to Bad Wrestling Matches runs at Stand in the Square at 23:00 on August 15, 17, 19-22, 24-29, and 31.

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