Fringe Review: Dr. Brown Behaves

Buyer beware. Fringe Festivals can be a refuge for charlatans and con men masquerading as artists. Anyone proclaiming themselves a “surreal comedy superstar” and promoting their show with faux-endorsements from Gaulier and Franz Kafka is either inviting you in on the joke or attempting to sell you a lemon. In the case of Dr. Brown Behaves cookies handed out to select audience members are just one example of the absurd lemons both material and immaterial inflicted upon an all too receptive and innocent audience. Hunky Dr. Brown and his equally hunky cohort Brian the technician, employing basic clown and comedy 101 skills, pretend to be harmless ne’er-do-wells as they build to a finish whose sole purpose seems to be to get a hapless young female audience member to slather their almost naked bodies with copious amounts baby oil. That uncomfortable act is followed by the Prague Fringe Festival’s version of Beavis and Butthead rubbing their oiled torsos and genitals  (covered only by a jock strap or bikini brief) all over said audience member as they try to trap her in Brown Brian Sandwich complete with tongues wagging in search of an open mouth kiss. The final coup d'etat is a transparent call for comments on paper and pen (eagerly provided by Brian still clad only in jock-strap). It is pretty apparent however that the only comments the lads are interested in are digits. 

Intermittently amusing and annoying for the first thirty minutes, the second thirty minutes goes nowhere, leaving you to wish the performance truly was as advertised–with “little use of language”. Ultimately, you feel like an hour of your life has been stolen away by two dudes who spend way too much time in bars trying to think of cool ways to pick up girls and make fun of an audience who is naïve enough to pay to see their hi-jinks. If you want to experience two truly funny and talented clowns head to The Crying Cherry instead – they actually know the joke is on them and not the audience.