BATSU! – 2.5 **’ - One4Review
one4review | On 11, Aug 2024
BATSU as you will be gleefully told if attending this show is Japanese for “punishment”. The story goes that at one point in the ancient past, Batsu no Akuma, the Japanese Spirit of Punishment, was sealed within a sacred gong. At the start of the show, the gong is rung, releasing the spirit and only by being appeased with laughter can it be resealed. For comedians (or “warriors”) must compete to prove themselves the funniest in the room. But for those that don’t meet the bar – they must suffer the punishments. These range from being shot with paintball guns to mousetraps on the hands and they only get worse from there.
I should be honest up front and say I found this show difficult and not for the reasons you might expect. While the punishments of the title are enough to make you flinch and cringe at times, it’s actually everything else about the production I found punishing.
For a start the show is long for a Fringe show. Looooooooooong. It’s billed as taking two hours, but while in the queue outside, the ever-hard-working fringe volunteers told me that it often took longer. And that’s a long show for any time of the day, let alone starting at 10:45pm. But I wasn’t actually dreading this while waiting to get in, I was expecting some classic, old school Fringe chaos with lots of over the top antics from sozzled comedians and certainly that’s what the flyers seemed to promise.
But far from being chaotic, the pacing of the show is glacial. It was near half an hour before the actual show began, with the long breaks filled in with occasional side shows and reminders that we could go to the bar or buy one of their branded headbands which would entitle us to a shot glass of sake (not a bad selling point, in fairness). This show originated in America and it couldn’t be more obvious, from the focus on upselling and constant cheerleading to energise a not-quite-drunk-enough-for-this crowd to the slightly uncomfortable nature of the heavy Japanese theming (despite a vast majority of everyone involved being white men in their thirties and forties).
The games and punishments almost certainly change each night, but from what I witnessed the competitions were fairly standard improv games which would be dragged to a screeching halt every time a punishment was awarded. The punishment would take place and then the improv game would start again, and so on. The improv was not terrible, but clearly much more effort was put into the “bastu” for each and, unless you’re the kind of person who thought that Jackass was the absolute peak of comedy entertainment, I’m not sure you’d get much out of it.
For a show on at the end of a long day, with so much stopping and starting, with constant reminders to spend more and calls to cheer without anything worth cheering happening, I honestly didn’t have the energy to sit through the whole two hours and took advantage of the open door policy to quietly slip out just over half-way through. It’s perfectly possible that from that point onwards things improved massively, but I shall never know.
This is not a show for me, but it clearly has a following. It’s a successful franchise, in several cities and countries and not a few of those attending on the night were clearly returning audience members who knew the catchphrases and in jokes and were seemingly delighted by all that happened. The host in particular was great and one of the few people present who really brought some life into the show. I think the actual bones of the show are fine in a wacky Takeshi’s Castle way but as it is the main punishment it delivers is the run time.
**1/2
Reviewed by Tom
Underbelly Cowgate-Belly Dancer
22.45 (2hrs)
Until 24th Aug (not 12 or 19)
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