Lead Pencil: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Fiddler's Elbow

The first show of a run is always tough, especially starting midway through the Fringe. When I arrived at the venue the cast enthusiastically greeted me; stunned to hear I was turning up for the show. These newcomers have zeal, and luckily for them the room somehow filled up five minutes before the start.

Everything is a little shambolic, with the stage still being set up at start time and them hastily launching into an opening musical number holding props that match the lyrics. It's not funny, a recurring theme during the show, but the props are evidently made with love (and cardboard boxes).

The trio (two girls and a guy) are competent but the material is weak and clichéd. A skilled comedy performer relies on nuance, but Lead Pencil rely on loud noises, exaggerated accents, and boring stereotypes.

None of the sketches were atrocious, but the comedy seems missing. Everything is done in a way which suggests it should be funny; the premises are always funny in principle, for example a surreal job interview, but the sketches themselves always flat.

There's no inventiveness here, and almost every subject choice is unoriginal. The wildlife documentary David Attenborough type narration of a couple pulling is there, pops at Christianity are there, all the usual sketch subjects but nothing new to add.

Sketches are often overly long, such as a woman who can only talk in iambic pentameter, and the troupe really need to learn how to end with a big punchline. A lot of sketches simply finish or drift into the next one, which is a shame because some of them could have been contenders.

There's a lot of potential here, with glimpses in sketches of Shakespeare being given poor advice, a Daily Mail-like  radio channel causing hysteria and alienation, and a Pythonesque sketch of diners with ridiculously specific requirements. But the glimpses are fleeting and nothing is close to fully formed.

A decent first attempt and enough hope to suggest good things could emerge, but with the seemingly endless array of sketch groups performing there's nothing special here.