Review by Steve Bennett

You might want to turn to page one of your ‘Sketch Comedy For Dummies’ handbook to mark off the tired tropes Kieran And The Joes employ in Teampowered. For starters they are ‘lifestyle gurus’, the most-mocked of all the gurus, and this is a seminar about teamwork, so you might hazard a guess that their own team dynamic ends up being a tad dysfunctional, and you’d be right.

Even in the detail of the writing they follow some familiar patterns: there’s the dumb one who can’t get a handle on the slogans, and is frequently admonished by the others; a big secret subject that shouldn’t be mentioned that hangs heavily over proceedings; and there’s the boss-underling dynamic and dialogue that could have come straight out of The Office.

But clichés aside, this slick trio put some new spin on the idea, while performing with impressive skill and enough knowing cheek to guarantee the audience will enjoy their promised transformation from a bunch of strangers to a well-drilled team.

The trio make good use of their ticket-buyers; pulling them on stage for off-kilter interaction or engaging in call-and-response that gets a little uncomfortable, but never scarily so. They are just messing, creating frisson, not tension.

Each of the three have their well-defined personalities: Kieran Hodgson is the benign dimwit, leaving Joes Parham and Markham to battle for supremacy, the former is the nominal leader clearly less socially adept than his colleague, and therefore intimidated by him. And although the relationships shift over the hour, the interaction between them is always credible – no matter how outlandish the sketches become.

Indeed, the show does take a few peculiar turns along the way, again helping it move away from the easy parody it could so easily have become.

Several of the ideas here seem to be influenced by The Apprentice, where vacuous bullshit and self-belief are seen to be more important than talent, training and graft. The sketch in which Hodgson is urged to be a surgeon, bypassing the seven years of medical school, is the most blatant example of this – but the conviction that you can achieve things just by the power of persuasion runs right through.

They might not persuade you that they are comedy’s next big things – at least not yet –  but they’ve certainly put together a slick, enjoyable hour.

Review date: 8 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett