The Beta Males: Happenstance

Fringe veterans and Chortle Award nominees the Beta Males have a reputation for cramming an improbable amount of material into their allotted hour, without the resulting show ever suffering for their speed. From the opening act's motormouthed parody of British farce to the show's surprisingly comprehensive finale, Happenstance never feels rushed in its execution, only athletic. Audiences will be glad to see such stamina, as there's barely a joke worth missing, even if the performers do have to abuse raw coffee grounds to fit them all in.

As the scenarios pile up—a police chief haunted by his lack of a tragic backstory, a group of dads on a punishingly sensible holiday, a divorcee who invents a teleporter—audiences will soon realise that the sketches form an intricate, semi-linear narrative that, unlike many such grand designs at the Fringe, actually comes together.

A common staple of dark comedy is horror befalling the innocent, and the Beta Males deliver this in spades. What's noteworthy, beyond the almost constant hilarity, is that such horrors never quite bypass our sense of tragedy while serving up the laughs. When one of the troupe explains that his graduation ceremony was infested by bears who ate his family, you genuinely feel for him. The grisly fate of a failed human cloning experiment is similarly heartbreaking. This balancing act between quiet sadness and loud comedy—though the emphasis is definitely on the latter —is tremendously difficult to pull off, but the Beta Males manage it with aplomb.