Fierce, fast, farcical and ferocious, The Beta Males certainly pack a punch in their new show
Fierce, fast, farcical and ferocious.
The first set of sketches are inventive and entertaining: the spoof revival farce and ‘Dads on Tour’ sketches tread familiar ground, but still get the laughs in. However, The Beta Males really set themselves apart from the rest of the ever-growing sketch crowd by their original, whimsical and downright strange sketches. A graduate whose ceremony gets invaded by an unwelcome and grizzly visitor, and a man who has been turned into a pony by a magical cake rank among the best of them.
Ingeniously, the intelligence behind the madness does not stop there, where we see recurring sketches of a Police Procedural send-up, and a super villain double-crossing sketch tying in to the rest of the sketches in the show. What eventually comes of the hour is an incredibly well-thought-out interconnected series of sketches that, while being entirely ridiculous in their style and delivery, all tie together in a way that would make any whodunnit writer proud. This well-roundedness of the show and layer upon layer of in-jokes creates a whirlwind of comedy which you cannot help but get swept up in.
While some of the punch lines could be stronger, it is obvious that this is not where the emphasis is intended to be, and to be honest it doesn’t need to be. The finesse with which these young sketch comics create a world for the audience never fails to pique the imagination and tickle the funny bones of everyone in the room. You can be sure of some incredibly awful puns to boot. With the coffee and red bull-fuelled energy of a bullet train, this is one sketch group who put sweat, tears and blood into their show, and you’re sure to be splashed in the face by each and every one of them.
