2011 Edinburgh Fringe
Men Of War review
Think sketch shows at the Fringe and you'll probably picture a bunch of up-and-coming young talents running around in the mid-afternoon to little fanfare, until one of them goes on to big solo success, after which everyone will say they were avid fans, like the several million people who apparently saw the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club in 1976.
Men of War give off a very different vibe. Perhaps it's the lateness factor - an 11pm show, deep into the Fringe, in one of the Festival's less salubrious venues - but there's a jaded air to this interminable hour. It promises much, with an impressive cast, including The Office/Inbetweeners star David Schaal and this year's Best Newcomer nominee Cariad Lloyd, but you come away wondering what on earth possessed them to pitch up at this Portakabin for a month with such a patchy show.
The set-ups lack inspiration - several sketches about drunken blokes, an unpleasant running gag about grooming, one about a shopping channel that's presumably been sitting on someone's hard-drive for a decade - and while elsewhere the Fringe is awash with envelope-pushing, this is like watching an unsuccessful pilot from the 1990s.
Schaal in particular looks horribly out of place lumbering around the stage, while the gifted Lloyd is given almost nothing of any consequence to do, and surely can't be happy playing 'annoyed girlfriend' while the three chaps lark about. There's one big laugh from the often bored-looking audience: a well-realised but hardly revolutionary Dirty Dancing skit; and the show ends in the worst possible fashion, with that most excruciating of old sketch tricks: the whole cast pretending to corpse, for ages.
It's desperate stuff, reminiscent of late-era Russ Abbott. Really, chaps, what were you thinking?