HOT TICKETS
Pulse – Arts Feature– September 1999
By Rob O'Brien

The Scrimshaw Brothers' production, Odd Little Men, asks how weird sketch comedy can get. The initial run of the bizarre comedy was so popular that BLB brought the brothers back for more. If random situations and David Lynch-like characters make you laugh then this is your kind of production. As you laugh yourself silly to their interpretation of legalized prostitution and a man who can't touch his own butt, you'll begin wondering what drugs the brothers have been taking to come up with the idea for this show. With a brand of comedy that's been compared to such legends as the Kids In The Hall, Odd Little Men is a tears-leaking-out-of-your-eyes kind of comedy show.


FALL THEATER PREVIEW
Lavender – September 1999
By John Townsend

Look Ma No Pants! Those inventive Scrimshaw Brothers tend to steer comedy into unpredictably charming directions.


HOT TICKETS
Pulse – October 1999
By Rob O'Brien

Minnesota's most ludicrous comedy duo is opening a new show. The Scrimshaw Brothers' latest work is a late night variety show entitled, Look Ma No Pants. Fresh off their recently acclaimed show at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, the comedy team is ready to amuse more audiences with their inspired insanity. But Look Ma No Pants is more than just the two bizarre brothers, it combines the talents of some of the Twin Cities' best comedic singers and dancers. The variety show is a great way to get those late night laughs for cheaper than a movie.


FRINGE FESTIVAL REVIEWS
City Pages – August 2000
By Erick Dregni

Roll over, Brad Pitt, as Mime Club replaces Fight Club in this lineup of shtick, skits, dance and improv. The gut wrencher of these loose-limbed routines is "Comedy in a Nutshell", in which Joseph Scrimshaw plays an aged but feisty vaudevillian who reveals his funny-man tricks before the final rim shot can yank him off life's stage. Another highlight is an interactive routine involving Star Wars vs. Winnie the Pooh origami, which goes from silly to sublime as the hard-to-please audience refuses to settle for paper versions of Yoda and Stormtroopers, demanding instead to see "The Force" folded.


MN FRINGE FESTIVAL REVIEWS
Pulse – August 2000
By Debra Stolberg

The Scrimshaw Brothers present their always entertaining mix of sketch comedy, improv, dance and special guests. The night I saw the show included Star Wars Origami and songs from Dean J. Seal, executive producer of the Fringe. The sketches are not only funny, they're smart; the improv is usually great; the dance numbers are an interesting change of pace, and if you give up your pants, you get in free (three audience members did the night I was there). You know you're in for a good show when even the sound/light technician is funny.


THEATER REVIEW
Star Tribune – February 2001
By Rohan Preston

The Scrimshaw Brothers (Joshua and Joseph) are not card cheats. But you have to watch them all the same.

These fellows are funny.

In one comedy routine, they tell you about a straight (side) man who is gay. In another, they play naughty and naughtier, going to low places and suggesting things best left for those racy magazine covers that you can see at airports. In all of this, they interpret ground rules to suit their needs, even pulling a pair of switcheroos.

Other productions in the Absolute Originals festival of one man shows at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis feature solo performers doing everything possible to hold your attention and suggest other characters. But Joseph Scrimshaw gave the debut of The Comic Sutra: A One Man Show Starring Joseph Scrimshaw and Three Women.

Friday's performance featured Joshua Scrimshaw standing in, sitting in and dying for his ill brother in a loony script about an adoptive mother and her dying father who are desperate to carry on the comedic line. The family members want their little girl to marry a comedian and then quickly breed.

Trying to fulfill her family's wishes, Lucy (Megan Nelsen-Odell) the clueless, hapless girl, goes out on serial blind dates with some maladjusted comedians (all played by Scrimshaw). Where a Romeo might pull out a bouquet of flowers, one loser pulls out a microphone and addresses her, sideways, as if she were on the other side of a stadium.

With its alternately surprising and gross-out situations, and its use of rubber chickens, canes and other classic vaudeville shtick, Comic Sutra elicits plenty of guffaws. The show could be cut, but considering that Joshua Scrimshaw stepped in at the last minute for his brother, it's grossly uproarious.


BEST THEATER FOR COMEDY - THE ACADIA CABARET
City Pages – Best of the Twin Cities - 5/2/01

Comedy is pretty mobile in the Twin Cities. Let us take as an example comedian/storyteller Ari Hoptman, who has in the past year performed at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, Intermedia Arts, the Phoenix Playhouse, a Minneapolis church, and Berlin. One suspects that if there were no venue at all, Hoptman would simply take a soapbox to Powderhorn Park, stand atop it, and begin shouting his monologues at passersby. As ambulatory as local comedy may be, however, there is one venue that the funny stuff keeps coming back to: The Acadia Café and Cabaret. This place has seen Hoptman onstage twice in the past few months, as well as providing a monthly home to the subversive sketch comedy of the Scrimshaw Brothers. Additionally, the Acadia is the regular haunt of the Brave New Institute-trained Velvet Elvises, for our money the best local troupe working in the long-form improv style known as t he Harold.


FROM "MUST SEE" to "MUST AVOID": A GUIDE TO THE FRINGE St. Paul Pioneer Press - August 2001
By Dominic P. Papatola and Matt Peiken

Need help unraveling the more than 100 plays of the eighth annual Fringe Festival? Here's a quick guide to what's hot and what's not. These are arranged alphabetically in three categories: must see, must consider, must avoid.

MUST SEE "Look Ma, No Pants!: The Official Party Show of the 2001 Minnesota Fringe," The Scrimshaw Brothers
The Twin Cities' sharpest sketch-comedy team defends the crown well with clever jabs at artists, PBS and the Fringe Festival, among others. A beatnik plays the bully, taking Jane from Dick and knocking aside her trepidation with the line of the night: "I'm an artist, baby. My personal demons will be our chaperone."

In another sketch, PBS's attempt at a hip, late-night talk show - "Up All Night," which runs from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. - employs fly-girl dancers straight from the library. Friday night's improv set was atypically sloppy in an otherwise laugh-loaded variety show.