Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Another rhyming couplet of well-to-do white boys in matching suits, Finlay Stroud and Joe Peden are purveying some straight-down-the-line sketch comedy in their characterless room at the top of some art studios.

It’s hard to really be surprised by this kind of set-up, but you have to admit that the suits, sparkling blue and embroidered with flames, are very snazzy.

The flames tie into the narrative, as the conceit here is that a fire rages through Dovecot Studios in the first few minutes of the show, scattering their script to the winds and somehow entombing the audience in the venue’s remains. 

Also one of them has lost his memory and now believes himself to be a Scottish engineer who’s fallen into a peat bog. Sifting through their scattered papers, the duo find themselves transported into a series of sketches.

As advertised, the premises for these sketches are often fairly imaginative. There’s an audition for a master chocolatier, a shop where you can buy accents, an extremely far-sighted detective etc. And they’re often conceptually amusing, although long stretches of dialogue and sometimes entire sketches can pass without a real laugh line, which is the show’s unfortunate weakness. 

Others just seem like they could have had more time in the oven, or been cut in favour of something more punchy. One of the better ones features Peden as Mayor Andy Burnham with a sinister scheme to turn the entire world into a suburb of Greater Manchester, but it feels like local material for a town that we’re frankly not in, and again is somewhat short on solid laughs.

As performers, they do fine. Peden in particular has confidence with voices and good range as a comic actor, while Stroud is a little narrower in his affect. It’s the script that needs tightening, as well as the attention to staging – too much of it is two men standing opposite one another and talking, without moving much or even switching sides of the stage

The anthemic singalong ending doesn’t quite come out of nowhere, but scrapes by without the requisite investment from the audience. They’re both performers with potential, but more focus is needed to boost their impact.

• Chortle’s coverage of sketch and multi-character acts at the Edinburgh Fringe is supported by (but not influenced by) the Seven Dials Playhouse. Read more

Review date: 10 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Dovecot Studios