Brainsluts review – clinical drug trial comedy could cause severe laughter

Pleasance Dome, EdinburghAn anti-work activist and a nepo volunteer join the group for a research study in Dan Bishop’s polished playWhen plays get under way we wait for something to happen – look and listen for clues, monitor behaviour, tune in. One of the many clever touches in this distinctive comedy by Dan Bishop is that his characters do exactly the same when they are introduced. Yaz, Mitch, Duggan and Bathsheba are to each be paid £2,000 for volunteering in a clinical drug trial; they’ve swallowed their pills and are now scrutinising every possible side-effect. It builds a hyper-awareness that accentuates the awkward exchanges that Bishop writes so well.The setup leads you to expect a broadside on gen Z’s financial precarity – it was a malaria drugs trial that funded superb standup John Tothill’s first fringe run – but there are other interesting ideas at play. One of the group has got her place through a relative (nepotism is rife even in volunteering); one is an activist extolling freeganism and the “anti-work movement”; one doesn’t need the money but is simply lost and lonely. From the bead-worrying Bathsheba’s dreamworld to Duggan’s excitable bursts of “broski!”, the characters are neatly juxtaposed while each, in their own way, wants to change the world they live in. By the fifth and final Saturday of their weekly appointments, they part ways refreshingly unchanged and without any Breakfast Club-esque transformation. Continue reading...

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