Kiosk of Champions 2: Kiosk of Champions

Festival show @ The Pleasance Joker Dome, 3.45pm

Kiosk Of Champions 2 - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Amiable stand ups Richard Sandling and Stuart Goldsmith join forces to bring new life into the sketch double act genre. The result is a score-draw.

Setting out their unique credentials from the beginning, the duo lay into formulaic sketch comedy with their Oxbridge ‘Concept Sketch’, a skit that then morphs from deliberate blandness into a token political sketch about the inherent weakness of Marxist models of redistribution. Prior to this the sparky duo have had a dig at Horne and Corden, thus cutting loose from as many schools of sketch thought as possible.

For a while it looks as if the pair are right to put some clear blue water between themselves and their contemporaries. Deft takes on piracy, pitting a Jack Sparrow style Pirate against a highly-Anglicised Somali pirate, and even throwaway sketches such as reprising the theme of ‘good cop, bad cop’ reap just reward for this pair of physical opposites but like minds.

Unfortunately, proceedings take rather a tumble just over halfway through and the act reverts to habits of the more pedestrian shows that they previously the rise out of. Sketches at fault include a man unwittingly initiated into a secret society that raises money for arts venues and a closing fireman sketch that is so obvious and gag-light that other troupes might not have even included it in their show, let alone chosen as a finale.

Kiosk snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.