Grocery shopping with clowns: Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS. A Fringe review

The two perky, apple-cheeked characters we meet in this light, bright, playful diversion of a clown show, by and starring Rainier Pearl-Styles and Nicholas Chieffo of Holy Scoundrels Theatre, are wonderstruck by the possibilities of grocery shopping: a shopping cart! produce! special offers! coupons!  Their daily mantra: “You can’t spell duo without me and you-o.”

Jeff (Pearl-Styles) has a certain practical streak. Put the cupcake back, they tell their pal Grungled (Nicholas Chieffo), the impulsive one. “Do we look like we’re made of money for snacks?” Grungled, who has a beam like a lighthouse beacon, pouts.

They’re attracted by the possibilities of a new No Frills initiative, a “men’s macho market” from which female shoppers are to be excluded. They’re strapped for cash, apparently, and there will be discounts on frozen dinners, sausages, and there’s the holy grail of free stuff, cupcakes. So they’re taken aback, and then dismayed, by the discovery of the store enforcer that they’re not really men (or ladies, for that matter). Gender isn’t really their thing, as clowns. Even their moustaches, the one painted on and the other actual hair, won’t pass muster. Really, no one wants to hear “you look like dildos, and smell like my grandmother.”

So they set about learning manliness — the smell, the stance, the gait, the attitude. So they enlist an expert from the audience, i.e. a man, to assist with this education. At the performance I saw, they really lucked out with the genial volunteer Chris, who gave them a crash course onstage on how to stomp around assertively.   

The strong suit of the show isn’t really an examination of the patriarchy or a defence of non-binary inclusivity. It’s charm. Both Pearl-Styles and Chieffo, skilled clowns, have a lot of it. And their interactions with the audience are amusing, as they scramble through the crowd, improvising at every turn. But, assaulted by their continuing failure to pass the man test, they are reduced to fighting with sausage swords, to the very death, a sure proof since forever of masculinity.

It’s fun, in an easy-going, untaxing way, to hang with a couple of clowns for an hour at the Fringe, and see a cartoon caricature of macho culture, assisted by amusing props.