Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

This fascinating debut from the duo of Ciaran Chillingworth and Kit Finnie rewrites the rules of sketch, dropping us in a world of Lovecraftian angels and demons with only comedy to save us.

The Mayor and His Daughter hail from a town that seems to exist in England’s past, present and future, where the townspeople are vessels for dark forces and the high street chains are eroding away, to be replaced by LinkedIn.

 Three weeks ago in this blighted landscape, they came across their salvation, series 2 of Russell Howard’s Good News, and realised that only comedy can redeem England's soul. Now, worshipping Howard as an angel, they’re here to bring us together through an artform that they barely understand.

In most sketch shows, this would be the framing narrative only, but for TMAHD, every sketch takes place firmly in the world they’ve created – a very strange world that’s only illuminated in fits and starts and remains essentially unknowable at the end of the show. 

We meet a selfish postman, a talking milk bottle from beyond the veil between life and death, and a terrifying pig-faced businessman obsessed with ‘the perfect transaction’. But no matter how deep we appear to be going down the rabbit hole, all these characters are being played by The Mayor and His Daughter as a form of moral instruction to us, a group of villagers in danger of possession.

The fact that the layers of reality become so intriguingly porous  is purely down to Chillingworth and Finnie’s performances, Chillingworth as a portentous but probably benevolent patriarch, and Finnie as a much more modern-seeming, feisty character, prone to kicking off against her Dad but still locked in his endless cycles of punishment and reward (via red wine and Thai Sweet Chilli Sensations).

 Finnie in particular is magnetic, with a bank of tiny comic gestures that means she sometimes pulls focus even when the Mayor is trying to get us to concentrate on a group of slides he’s put together on obscure, unnameable emotions.

The staging is also a star. Directed by Joz Norris, the team have really outdone themselves here with a series of minimal but brilliantly effective choices. The homemade, slightly frightening quality of their props is a nice complement to the world they’ve created. Denizens of England’s ruins, balanced on a knife edge between Calvinist terror of God and the Enlightenment’s terror of individual liberty, they must cobble together comedy from the resources they have available.

Very occasionally they’re in danger of pushing their aesthetic into the realms of something more oppressively quirky, and for some people the duo’s boldly deconstructionist take on comedy is going to make this a Marmite experience.

But for 99 per cent of the show they miraculously strike a perfect balance between cracked comedy and ominous foreboding. My new favourite sketch group. Perhaps yours too?

Review date: 17 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy