The Argus: fringe_2011_logo_red_thumbIt's been three years since Brighton’s very own Spymonkey did their last show. It seems very apt that the city’s Festival Fringe was the event to showcase their latest sketches of physical comedy, Love In.

Set with a 1980s evangelical Christian backdrop, sharing love was the underlying theme, all through the eyes of a married couple who hate each other, a Spaniard who fancies anything walking and a deadpan German doctor.

While the personalities were great, it was the top-notch physical comedy which really spoke for itself. Clever, repetitive and madcap – the quartet have effortless symmetry which means they hardly needed to move to earn a chuckle.

The times where the audience were not laughing was simply because there was no air left in the cramped stomach to squeeze out another giggle.

Highlights included a really bad magician with an equally awkward assistant and a hotel menage à trois with a difference. All this culminated in the burning of Joan of Arc, which turned into a pole dancing scene with naked medieval guards.

With a local choir and and Irish dancing, there was time for the audience to catch their breath. All in all, it was a fitting first show at the resurrected Old Market.