Irish trio Foil, Arms and Hog, or Sean Finegan, Conor McKenna and Sean Flanagan to their parents, barely leave the stage for the duration of this dizzying hour of sketch comedy. No lights up, lights down for them - the only thing to separate each sketch is a last-ditch dive towards a cymbal placed at the far end of the room. What seems to begin as a relatively straightforward, solid and unoriginal series of sketches gradually develops into a far darker, compellingly unhinged territory, where those cymbal crashes increasingly sound more like wake-up calls to remind the audience of the real world.
Though there are a couple of predictable notes, such as an opening sketch about dodgy mortgage schemes and a football manager sketch that crams in so many ideas it appears more like three half-sketches, at their best the group’s willingness to play cartoony slapstick whilst embracing the pitch-black repercussions of their absurdity is reminiscent of The League of Gentlemen. A superb riff on tensions in an imagined improv group - not dissimilar from the League’s own ‘Legs Akimbo’ - takes suggestions from the audience, only for the three to orchestrate the perfect catastrophe, Finegan in particular blocking McKenna at every step in a farcical whirlwind of actual improv and scripted awkwardness. We were made to watch an increasingly anguished slanging match between a family of chairs failing to accept a ‘homosapien’ boyfriend. Though much of the humour here comes from broad, no-frills gags, the highlight of the set is a masterly crafted scene of three interwoven sketches, three gossiping ladies, a nervous learner driver and a scene in hell, that seamlessly merge into each other in a fantastically paced denouement. The three snap between scenes without a moment’s let up, hopping with pinpoint precision between characters.
Despite the late night feel that for many other performers would be a green night for a boozy, uncertain show, the group marry big laughs with a sense of a show that has been expertly choreographed - every moment, every facial expression, and yes, every attempt to mime a talking chair.
