Low Down
Welcome to the world of Aeneas Faversham, The Penny Dreadfuls'bb James Bond-like Victorian creation; an opportunity for a fine sketch show that had us in fits of laughter.
Review
The Penny Dreadfuls, back in Edinburgh after success last year, comprise Jamie Anderson, Humphrey Ker, David Reed and Thom Tuck: four talented, versatile and consistently funny performers who took to the Belly Button stage in their sketch comedy show "Aeneas Faversham Returns". I don't want to tell you a thing about any of the sketches for fear of spoiling the many surprises in this laugh-every-few-seconds tour-de-farce.
From the fabulous opening death scene (whoops) to the side-splitting, Oscar-worthy take on "The Invisible Man" (whoops, there I go again), this is character comedy at its finest, with no small amount of physical knockabout thrown in for good measure. It's sharply written, the commitment of the performers is huge and there's an often hard-to-find combination of strong material and excellent delivery. This is a talented troupe. The writing is eloquent, it doesn't fall into obscure surrealism, it's strongly acted comedy theatre, full of direct, accessible and top-notch sketch-punchline humour.
Theatrically, it's a masterclass from a fairly young cast, who were clearly enjoying themselves as much as we were in the audience. We're taken into shadowy nineteenth century streets, moody drawing rooms, and esoteric secret meeting places, as this funny four demonstrate brilliant timing, interplay and stage togetherness. To enjoy it, you'll have to enter willingly into this world of 19th Century light and shadow. You'll have to allow bearded men to play women. By the end, we were happy to allow these chaps anything, as long as they remained on the stage.
The audience loved the show from start to finish. If I have one gripe (it is a regular one for me) it is this: not all of the punch lines were as punchy as the excellent sketches that preceded them. It can be hard to come up with punchy endings to pieces this good and several sketches ended on punch lines that... lacked punch. But that really is a minor gripe in a show I'd see again in order to catch some of the many physical and verbal one-liners I probably missed in a five star gem at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.
Reviewed by PL 3 Aug 2007
