Review by Steve Bennett

The besuited Consultants parody the high-flying world of cutthroat decision-making with a variable array of absurd sketches on modern life.

Some are thought-provoking, subtle and spookily accurate - the children's entertainer and the Filthy Goose glove puppet being
particularly amusing.

The show is peppered with one-liners and snappy observations, ranging for the silliness of the Carry On era to explorations of a potato-based capitalist market - and performed by a confident and adept team of actors.

Yet some sketches are a bit laboured, with the quality falling well short of the finer moments. Low points include the seemingly inane murder scene and the drawn-out exam sketch that seemed to leave the audience bewildered.

And at times it slumped into the distinctly unimpressive Chuckle Brothers school of comedy, with 'hilarious' quack noises and a peurile song entitled Fiddle With Me Diddle De Dee.

The multitalented threesome have clearly given a lot of thought to this frequently intelligent and well-written show, which they perform with flair, gusto and a keen sense of comic timing.

Yet the inclusion of several irrelevant and ill-conceived skits - culminating in a visually funny but stereotypical and weak song by a Bolivian folk band - suggests a fair degree of padding around the core of brilliant sketches.

Review date: 1 Jan 2002
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett