Comedy
Pleasance Courtyard
16.20
August 3rd to 28th (not 15)
**
This show recreates a decades-old Radio 4 comedy hit which spoofed other comedies at the time. Angus Deayton, Helen Atkinson Wood, Richard Fenton Stevens and Philip Pope are engaged in affectionately paying tribute to a mild satire, and also gently spoofing it.
There is a striking and very funny air guitar number a third of the way through – the high point, I felt – and a later Bee Gees take-off. Then much playing with script gaffes and misreadings of punctuation. After a while the jokes came to seem repetitive. This is in Pleasance One and there was a very big audience of an appropriate age, but I’m afraid I ended up bored, and I did have the feeling that at least some in the audience, who came with high expectations, also came to feel disappointed.
The cast all make a valiant effort, but there is only so much you can squeeze out of what was so obviously a radio event. Apart from the air guitar number this would likely work better on the radio, making, say, a heap of washing up seem less arduous
Tony Challis.