Review by Steve Bennett

The cast, actors and performers of Bad Play are back for their most importantest piece to date so far. On trail for crimes they did or did not commit is humanity are it innocent, or guilty, or not guilty? Only the judge can judge. And so can the jury

Fast becoming something of a Fringe institution for its mangled scripts, inept acting and technical catastrophes, this celebration of the worst in earnest fringe theatre is as stupidly entertaining as ever.

Cues are missed, props lost, lines fluffed, accents wander and sound and lighting all over the place as the men of The Trap sketch troupe throw every disaster they can think of into the performance. What can go wrong, will - and probably twice.

Since amateurishness is the gag, the team take a certain laissez fair to the whole thing, admitting any sort of cack-handed shenanigan they can into the mix: whether it's the next show setting up around them or roaming lights to pan the stage for no obvious reason. After all, the more anarchic the better, right?

But the chaos is so much more entertaining when they've applied more thought and effort to getting it wrong, such a scene in which the lines get so jumbled actors are replying to words yet to be said, a hideously offensive attempt to illustrate the evils of racism by blacking up or a distractingly clunking fan that the audience only gradually becomes aware of.

It's loosely designed as a parody of those naïve but well-meaning amateur productions aiming so badly at a serious message. "I hope you didn't come hear to be entertained," the audience is warned at the top of the show, as Issues are confronted to change our minds, and thus end war, Global Warning and poverty through the power of the theatre along.

Along the way, we batter the baby Jesus, see Ariel Sharon as the most stereotypical Jew imaginable, meet a cuddly hook-handed Abu Hamster and parody George Bush as a classroom dunce ­ the latter as intelligent a political comment as more than few stand-up comics can manage. All good Knockabout stuff, and sprinkled with puns as bad as the acting.

'So bad, it's good' is always a hard thing to pull off, and Bad Play does much better than most, even if it's too under-written to maintain the momentum through the entire hour.

Review date: 1 Jan 2004
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett