Horse & Louis: The Curse of...
Live Review
Underbelly Cowgate

This was yet another Fringe show which left me stumped as to why they bothered.  Horse and Louis are decent musicians and know the musical comedy genre well, but it was a self-indulgent hour that left me feeling tetchy.

The Curse of Horse and Louis is a premise that allowed them to indulge in some retina searing lighting effects, ghastly ghosty howls and running about Scooby-Doo-style, using the stage and space available to them to embellish a bunch of material  that would not have been out of place on a corner of wet carpet  above a failing pub.

They clearly have devoted fans, as one man was shouting with laughter even as they took to the stage, a bad case of premature amusement. They hadn’t earned the laugh.  They opened with a competent song about who they are not, inviting a comparison with Flight of the Conchords, which was a bit unfortunate, and a statement that musical comedy is the lowest rung on the comedy ladder. Really? Tell Bill Bailey or Tim Minchin.  It’s only a low rung if you don’t have any comic ambition.

It’s all very well to be ironically shit, but telling three sets of jokes that would barely pass muster in an interval joke competition, without actually adding anything better is pretty unforgiveable.  Then you got the unedifying prospect of a grown man pretending to be penis, a nonsense song where they hadn’t been bothered to write the nonsense words and a lot of gurning.

The songs  and song parodies aren’t terrible, they perform the grim material with shameless gusto and the a measure of slickness,  a but this level of achievement would be surpassed by a school drama group.

They mentioned many times that they’d wanted a 10.30pm slot, because of the ‘adult’ content of what they do and implied that the lunchtime setting was hampering them. But this was schoolboy stuff and would sorely disappoint someone who made it the focus of their comedy night.  Only for friends and fans.