Not The Adventures Of Moleman: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Laughing Horse @ City Cafe

At least two people were enjoying themselves with this ill-judged effort. Sadly neither of them were in the audience.

Arron and Dicky try so hard. They clamour over furniture, get naked, indulge in energetic dance numbers, and yell to inject some life into their easily distracted 1am, unpaying punters… yet all the effort is for nought. The show is still dull.

It’s fatally hampered by their habit of breaking every sketch by commenting on its flaws, belying the fact that behind those big performances, they are not that confident in their material. They also have a singular lack of timing, with most sketches going on  way too long, and a couple of almost interminable scene-changes where some audio drivel is pumped into our ears while we twiddle our thumbs or check our texts.

They are also quite repetitive, using callbacks so badly it just seems like flogging a dead horse. And while they almost get a gag out of this with their hypnotically simple kids’ song; but they don’t quite know what to do with it. So the irritation that’s supposed to be the joke, just stays at actual irritation.

It’s even more frustrating that they so often start their skits on what looks roughly like the right track, but self-sabotage long before any conclusion. Proper sketches with endings are hard to write, so it’s so much easier to abandon them half-cocked with some knowing commentary about the quality of their acting. But self-deprecation only works if the audience think you’re actually good – if they agree with you, it’s just reinforcement.

They have some charm, but it’s quickly used up. And very telling was their habit of calling what they were doing ‘theatre’ with no apparent tongue in cheek. Step one to turn this around is to start thinking like comedians not actors. Step two, write some frigging jokes.