From the off the
It was a bombardment of ideas that needed filtering and refining.
Far too many sketches left me more stunned than anything else. It was a bombardment of ideas that needed filtering and refining. The flaw all too often was quite simply that the idea, situation or punchline was at most amusing, at worst incoherent. The sketches took the tired format of sketch, blackout, sketch, blackout, resulting in a loss of any momentum that had been set in motion.
They may have benefitted from forcing the dispersed audience to the front of the seating and creating a more intimate and welcoming setting. A clever device to increase audience involvement was their use of 'Bingo': when all three lines of someone's bingo card had been said - the winners were brought onto stage. Disappointingly, when they had these audience members at their mercy, the scenario they created lacked much comedy.
A clear theme for the show would have helped, whilst a consistent style of comedy may have aided their attempts by focusing the show slightly more. The funniest moment of the show came when one of the performer's masks fell off and his improvisation of the subsequent dance whilst simultaneously holding the mask was brilliant (the effort of the performers cannot be faulted - the group giving their full energy for the vast majority of the time). However this only proved the comparative weakness of their pre-prepared material.
It must be remembered that this is a free show and should be judged accordingly. It is certainly better than sitting alone for an hour. There can be no doubt that the group enjoyed themselves making the show and during the performance, but make no mistake, there is far better sketch comedy on offer at the Fringe.
