Review by Steve Bennett

There’s a lot of zest to The Jest; they are a slick well-choreographed young quintet whose charisma and energy engages the audience. But that effervescence isn’t especially well-channelled, with sketches that range from the nicely surreal to the depressingly trite.

They have a penchant for unadventurous pull-back-and-reveals – See! the setting wasn’t where we made you think it was! – a cheap, manipulative device. Other scenes really force a weak gag, ramming it into place with overacted conviction. I’m looking at you Theatre In Education anti-drug sketch.

Stylistically they are all over the place. A Game Of Thrones audition is rather heavy-handed point-making satire; an Oscars skit is mischievously dense wordplay; a tourist guide to the fictional country of Bonjella a more traditional sketch; a 1950s-style public information film a bit too close to Harry Enfield’s similar parodies for comfort…

Yet sometimes the elements align to present delightfully daft scenarios. Absurdity is where they are the strongest and Luke Theobald the stand-out of the gang when it comes to executing it – with big, convincing performances of the most ridiculous ideas. His impish yet sinister Jim Broadbent, haunting the dreams of children, is a special delight – but he makes a memorable Dame Maggie Smith, too. A ghost hunting sketch featuring all five of the Exeter Uni graduates is another hit.

This group have been around awhile – there used to be nine of them and called Simply The Jest – so they should probably be a bit more consistent by now. But it they can become more unforgiving when editing the sketches, bringing the writing up to the same level as their enthusiasm, they could yet rise up the Fringe ‘to-see’ lists.

Review date: 8 Aug 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard