Him and Me: Sketch Circus: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Laughing Horse @ City Cafe

Shea Taylor and Steve Langstaff could benefit from a harsh director to rein in their exuberance, as their animated 45 minutes has its moments – but like hyperactive children, they just don’t know when to leave a sketch alone, forcing good ideas beyond the point of amusement for one more puerile outburst.

A case in point would be their skit about an armed robber in a clothes store. A neat twist accomplished, they could leave the stage on a high. But Taylor seems to revel in his camp portrayal of the shop assistant, and the scene is dragged out for a further minute or so.

Similarly, celebrity spirit botherer Derek Acorah struggling to arrange his wedding to a ghost is initially a nicely established setup. His obliviousness to the impracticalities of his demands are swept aside in his excitability, and there are a few smart lines regarding the guestlist. But Him and Me seem to know that this is one of the stronger moments in an instinctively juvenile production, and pad it out with back and forth banter, reinforcing the notion that they’re struggling to identify what’s funny about their material.

Framing the show with a circus theme affords them a couple of darkly funny remarks at the start and is thereafter irrelevant. Taylor tends to play flamboyant extroverts, Langstaff the more put upon fall-guy, although they both seem to enjoy dressing up in mini-skirts for a charmless, video pastiche of pop divas flaunting their more intimate parts. If there’s a bad taste direction an idea can go, they’ll pursue it, with a leaden rape joke and Facebook public warning. Mocking the recent proliferation of ‘Cash For …’ ads by ramping up the increasingly personal nature of the collateral, they bludgeon yet another decent conceit about spiralling cycles of poverty in a quest for sniggering vulgarity.

Undoubtedly elevating the show, the production values of their pre-recorded inserts aren’t bad. And you can only fault their commitment for its misguidedness, rather than the unrelenting energy they throw into their performance.

Their big finale, Kings of Leon returning to their redneck Christian faith, performing a supposedly clean living version of Sex On Fire all the more explicit for its affronted prudery, is just so full-on and so clunkingly lacking in wit, that you find yourself laughing at their boneheaded boldness.