Type – Dada-ist Weirdism
If you liked – The Marx Brothers (Almost but not quite like), Silent Comedy Films, Little Britain or The Benny Hill Show
Soup Friends: Ironically their own tagline is sadly true, it is “without the reward the work promises both to the performers and the audience”
2 STARS
Last week, I saw a Pummel Squad show (Twenty Million Thousand Leagues under the Sea) which was funny, charming, relatively well-executed and thought through – if a bit raw which was okay – it was enjoyable and had a point.
The three performers in this Pummel Squad performance seemed to be aiming to do a bit of Dada – i.e. bleak, nihilistic and ultimately arriving at pointlessness – mixed with Marx Brothers craziness and Little Britain’s tried and tested tactic that pushes your patience through its sheer use of repetition – plus a heaping of Benny Hill’s silliness and pants down antics from the ’70s.
Dada: It means nothing, but does that cut it in 2025?
Props have to go to Pummel Squad for utilising the Fringe Festival medium of pushing boundaries, but the Dada-type performance that sought to disrupt in the 1920s in the aftermath of WWI just doesn’t quite cut it. In the post-modern, post truth world of 2025 where Godwin’s Law doesn’t even count any more, you’ve got to offer us a bit more than undergraduate chuckles.
Cooper Donald McDonald and Harry McGee again perform in this alternative mish mash of ideas and random comic stylings, with help from Ludomyr Kemp-Mykyta. The audience that had arrived for this Dada-ist offering were laughing – albeit at random – such as at someone’s ridiculous underpants or their inability to assemble a flatpack chair.
Is Soup Friends Worth Seeing in Sydney?
Sorry Pummel Squad, on this occasion we’ve seen this all before. You’ve got to work harder in the long run to get an audience’s attention and accolades from such niche theatre.
Tickets and Practical Info for Soup Friends in Sydney 🎟️
VENUE: Erskineville Town Hall – The Living Room
DATES & TICKETS: Wed 17 to Saturday 20 September 2025
Tickets: https://sydneyfringe.com/events/soup-friends
- Created by – Pummel Squad
- Performer/Creator – Cooper Donald McDonald
- Performer/Creator – Harry McGee
- Performer/Creator – Ludomyr Kemp-Mykyta
- Producer – Mark Pritchard
