list.co.uk/festival Sketch Shows | FESTIVAL COMEDY
WHO WILL SAVE THE SKETCH SHOW?
Comedy critic Julian Hall reconsiders his sketch show scepticism and gets excited about the latest breed of acts. But will we have a new League of Gentlemen in our midst this August?
S ketch is impossible to avoid at the Fringe: believe me, I have tried. They wouldn’t let me subtitle this piece ‘And who really cares?’, but perhaps that’s just as well given that both sketch, and my feelings for it as a critic, have undergone something of a renaissance in the last few years.
Not before time. If you look at the sketch form as represented by the Edinburgh Comedy Awards (in its various Perrier, Foster’s and if.comedy guises), then the genre has been found truly wanting. Its last success came in 1997 with The League of Gentlemen, though nominees since then have included The Mighty Boosh, Epitaph, Dutch Elm Conservatoire, We Are Klang, Pappy’s and Idiots of Ants. But that is still just six contenders in 16 years.
Character comedy has been represented more successfully as far as winners are concerned (Garth Marenghi, Laura Solon, Adam Riches, Jackson’s Way), but although quality sketch has also been conspicuous by its absence on television, this ‘downturn’ has not manifested itself in terms of the number of eager double acts, triple acts and so on. As a measure of the sketch resurgence, this year has seen two dedicated contests run concurrently: Sketchfest, a format imported from the US and then rolled out in London during May, and the Best New Sketch Act 2013 run by Sketch Club and the Gilded Balloon. As a judge for Sketchfest, I saw for myself a clutch of really impressive young acts
including Rory and Tim, Thünderbards, So On & So Forth, Allnutt and Simpson and The Pin. Some of these acts will be among those hoping to break the sketch mould in Edinburgh this year. Here is our guide to four of the form’s rising stars:
THÜNDERBARDS An impressive performance at London’s Sketchfest added to the praise heaped on this cerebral and quick-witted duo, consisting of stand-up Glenn Moore and actor / improviser Matthew Stevens. Residencies in London fringe venues have prepped them for their Edinburgh debut which is based around two storytellers recreating tales collected in a leather-bound book, ‘trying to avoid their personal tensions splitting them up along the way’. Citing The Penny Dreadfuls and The Pajama Men as inl uences, Thünderbards think that there is something in the air for sketch comedy. ‘We would cautiously say that the sketch scene is in a good place right now. Sketch has been shunted from the mainstream to some extent in recent years by the all-conquering monolith of arena-i lling stand-ups, but with a whole raft of promising new(ish) sketch groups at the Fringe this year, we see it as being a good time for sketch to push itself back into the ascendency.’
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 31
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