The costumes may be naff, the props may break, but the belly laughs come thick and fast in this fun-filled hour of winningly surreal sketch comedy. This lot are slick and professional where it matters: the business of making an audience laugh. This female-heavy, four-strong sketch group have no weak links. Every sketch sits on a scale between funny and hilarious, taking us on a journey of the weird but truly wonderful. It’s all very silly rather than stupid and it never ventures into tedious art-house bizarre. Instead, it retains a skewed kind of realism. While not many of us have stuck a plastic tube to our head, in order to dress up as a unicorn, for the homemade perfume ad our husband is narrating and we are starring in, the audience can still recognize the marital disagreement that ensues from this strange and hilarious situation. It’s somehow all very believable and so we run with it. The short to mid-length sketches work the best, winning us over early with their sheer fun. Later sketches, particularly ‘St John’s Ambulance’, could do with cutting or a stronger narrative to keep us with it, though they still get plenty of laughs. Recurring characters like Diddy Man Vigilante are a winner with everyone, reinvigorating the hilarity of a false moustache to a level I wouldn’t have thought possible. One thing to look out for are the small notes of genius, nestled amongst sketches that are already funny by mere subject matter. One-liners, like a reference to a mother’s ‘lips’, had me shrieking in my seat, as did the accomplished audience interaction worked into the show. This is the kind of sketch comedy that hides its overall cleverness behind mayhem and is well worth a watch for an hour of manic funniness.

Reviewer:
Ashleigh Wheeler

Ashleigh Wheeler has written 17 reviews for Broadway Baby since joining the team in 2011.