Graham and Steen - Monkey Barrel 3 - Review

It takes great skill to construct a story from just one single suggestion, making that story last an hour between just two performers and a pianist takes that skill to even higher levels. But this is Graham and Steen, named by Broadway World as the cool guys of improv, and here they are to

construct a story so silly, so hilarious and so bonkers that your sides will ache from laughing.

Performing at the Edinburgh Fringe for three nights only, I feel extremely lucky that I was able to catch one of their shows, a late night special at Monkey Barrel. They ask for one thing only from the audience, an item and where it is on the stage. The offering for this performance, a beehive stage right. And the action begins, with Graham Dickson and Steen Raskopoulos instantly throwing themselves into a story that they ingeniously making up as they go along. Dickson becomes a bee keeper, with Steen as his assistant forced to work on the bee farm after being removed from the police force. But when a beehive is chopped down in its prime, the ex detective steps up to solve the crime leading to strange investigations into bee trafficking and kidnap, all with hilarious results.

Graham and Steen bounce and feed off of each other’s energy, creating multiple different characters from police chiefs and child criminals to crime bosses and even the bees themselves never once losing momentum. The teamwork between the two builds the story quickly and we, as an audience, are both drawn in and laughing out loud. Whilst no one knows what the other is going to say next, they still manage to joke and egg each other on with the train of thought you started it, no you commit to it as Raskopoulos names a character Mario off the cuff and Dickson commits to doing the entire scene in the style of the famous video game character.

One point in this performance that had the entire audience laughing out loud came when the characters were travelling by car and turned on the radio leading improvising pianist Laila Woozeer to try and play the music, only the keyboard to make a strange noise and for Dickson to proclaim what is that, we won’t be doing that again. Other highlights include the plethora of bee facts that Dickson came out with, true or not, you can decide. After all, has anyone ever messaged how fast a queen bee can fly or how deep it can dive? We also have to give credit to Raskopoulos for throwing himself into a high energy physical improv whilst recovering from knee surgery.

If you are looking for laugh out loud silliness, bonkers storylines and two friends clearly having the best time making up a show together, then look out for the next time Graham and Steen have a show on because you will just have the best time laughing and wondering at the craziness.