George’s Marvellous Medics is a sketch show about medics by medics, with a few Olympics pieces thrown in too, as well as a scattering of quite random ones.
Some of the scripts need tightening. However, there were some clever sketches making fun out of BUPA, marriage counsellors and clinical psychologists. Others played off the shock factor of hearing medical students make jokes about things like dementia, AIDs and other sexually transmitted infections. Some were really very dark, and edged on the surreal. There were also some all-cast pieces featuring darkly comic songs with many cast-members hilariously popping their heads out from behind the curtains during the harmonies.
The main thing that George’s Marvellous Medics suffers from is having a multitude of actors, with some much weaker than others. Little things gave away the amateurism of the group and the nervousness of some of the cast members, for example, when some of them would not look at the audience but instead into random open spaces. Some were stuttering and fumbling over lines, and some were just not very convincing actors and didn’t seem to have a clear idea of their comedic role in each set.
However, there were a few stand-out performances that make the show worth seeing, for example the actors playing Susan Wilcox, Belzebupa, the young boy having digestive problems, the nasty party guest, the gangster husband of dubious sexuality, and the 39-year-old boy-scout. On top of this, the confidence of the cast can only improve throughout the show’s run, so I would recommend going to see these medics’ show, as it may soon become quite a slick operation.
