“The UK’s lowest energy double act,” they call themselves. Which makes the wild west, with its attendant vocal drawl, suitable territory for Will Rowland and Eddy Hare’s fringe debut. Cowboys, directed by current Edinburgh comedy award champ Jordan Brookes, no less, finds the guitar-totin’ comics outlawin’ across the plains to blow up a railroad – or it would do, if Rowland didn’t keep interrupting to air his recent breakup grievances.
The dynamic could hardly be more familiar, as serious Hare tries with mounting frustration to deliver the show, and gadfly Rowland crashes it with real-world concerns. For old fringe hands, the storytelling mode is familiar, too, as Crizards celebrate the crapness of the effects (wrapping paper for quicksand; naff plastic dynamite sticks; meandering accents) that bring their old west one-dimensionally to life.
But Cowboys is a fine example of the genre. The relationship – deadpan Hare v mischievous Rowland – is fun to watch, and there’s an adroit balance between sending up western cliches (one lyric dismantles the logic of a supposed Man with No Name) and a-moseyin’ wherever their surrealist whim takes them.
A prime example of the latter finds lovelorn Rowland seeking his own annihilation in song, and Hare cheerfully bringing him back to life again. The music is almost always a treat here, as the duo “skippy-aye-ay” across the chaparral, singing of quicksand (“twice the speed of normal sand”), being serenaded by the moon. Maybe there are more dick and cum jokes than wholly necessary; or maybe its very childishness is part of the joke. Either way, it’s a likable low-key hour – not High Noon, perhaps, but at least quarter past eleven.
At Assembly George Square, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
