The Edinburgh Revue are an energetic bunch, never more so than during this show's opening sketch, a whirlwind rendition of the history of Edinburgh from dinosaurs through William Wallace and right up to the present day that has all five cast members dancing around on stage with a vigour that shows an invigorating disregard for their cramped surroundings. Though no other scenes call upon all five of them in quite the same way, the Revue members overflow with that same energy as individuals too, noticeably the remarkably rubber faced Katia Kvinge and the diminutive but occasionally explosively funny Adam Todd.
While you definitely can't fault their enthusiasm, there is a certain dearth of ideas on display in the Edinburgh Revue Sketch Show. Rory Telfer finds himself recycling essentially the same stereotypical, banter spewing scumbag character in a couple of different guises and while there may not be many other instances of such repetition, a few too many sketches end with a joke that is knowingly bad. Following a tame political gag with a fourth wall breaking exclamation of 'Satire!' might save you once, but there's only so many times you can get off the hook by delivering a bad line with a wink: eventually it just looks like poor writing.
Still, for the low low price of free you could do substantially worse than this promisingly upbeat sketch group whose can-do attitude for the most part overcomes some creative shortcomings.
