Maff Brown’s Parade of This present the audience with a tight, irreverent and thoroughly silly sketch show. Not the subtlest comedians on the block, they make up for their lack of invention with pace, energy and a likeability which charms as well as amuses.
The show falls well short of the promised hour and is primarily made up of short sketches. Bad puns dominate. Oddly however this does not destroy but rather makes the show. The actors seem to realise just how poor some of the puns are and their reaction to them and us is really quite hilarious. A particularly lovely moment came during a sketch featuring the character Annie, in which one actress corpsed as a result of Brown’s flies being undone, as he had not had enough time to change his costume.
Having said that puns seem to be Maff Brown’s bread and butter, it must also be said that there are a few lovely sketches, one highlight being a conversation between Pandas in a zoo - I don’t want to say any more for fear of spoiling it! Let’s just say that it had very convincing masks.
Maff Brown’s troupe does suffer from defects which would sink any other sketch show, you really shouldn’t be able to write a show on puns alone. However, the group’s charm, silliness and ironic presentation of their material make up for these problems and ultimately the show is a slightly ironic success.
