list.co.uk/festival Sketch Shows | FESTIVAL COMEDY
Clockwise from top left: Thrice,
The Pin, Birthday Girls
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BIRTHDAY GIRLS Formed from the still-warm roots of Lady Garden, Birthday Girls are Beattie Edmondson, Rose Johnson and Camille Ucan. The trio bring us 2053, directed by Tom Parry from plaudit-festooned all-boy sketch group Pappy’s, a peek into a future where comedy has been banned (‘the horror’) and where the fearless feminine trio set about forming a resistance through sketch. In terms of sketch’s assault on the actual comedy world, they believe that the troops are being mobilised: ‘It’s a great time for sketch with brilliant acts like Anna and Katy, Cardinal Burns and Pappy’s having a prominent presence on TV. What’s brilliant about the live sketch scene at the moment is that there is so much variety within the form. You can see dark, surreal groups, you can see topical, satirical groups, and you can see groups doing traditional, situation-based sketches.’
to THRICE Sketch ascendancy may come down realignment, with Lady Garden downsizing (as once did Pappy’s) while sibling outi t Toby (sisters Sarah and Lizzie Daykin) and character comedian Nathan Dean Williams have joined forces to form Thrice. Describing it as an ‘absurdist suburban nightmare of a sketch show’, the trio promise ‘casual cruelty, misanthropy, oblivion, perversion, yearning, loneliness, corned beef, Christmas, desperation, desolation and dancing (always dancing − it balances out the desolate parts)’.
Despite the anticipation of this collaboration, Nathan Dean Williams (once memorably described as ‘a i lthy, twisted Alan Bennett for the jilted generation’) is sanguine about the temperature of the scene: ‘I think it’s much the same as it ever was. New nights start up, old ones die a death; new acts appear, old ones give up, or morph into other ones. Or kill each other.’
THE PIN Winners of Sketchfest, The Pin (Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen), are back in Edinburgh and, as The Guardian noted, the dexterous duo are ‘heavily tipped for future stardom’. Often guesting at the über-cool Invisible Dot nights (the movers and shakers behind shows by Tim Key, Claudia O’Doherty and Tom Basden), the pair’s latest Fringe show promises to wrap their sharp intellect around PowerPoint presentations, lectures, sketches and other set-pieces. ‘In our show, we try and balance the sketches with bits where we just talk to the audience, so it feels maybe more like a sketch / stand-up hybrid. We’ve been keen watchers of Lee and Herring and The Mighty Boosh and other double acts.’ The Pin bear out the idea that sketch has yet to score a big hit, but that moment is certain to arrive: ‘It feels like there are a lot of great sketch acts out there on the circuit, but perhaps there hasn’t been a big TV success for a bit, one that really ini ltrates the public consciousness and has everyone referencing it or doing little bits from it. Maybe more than any other kind of TV, it seems that sketch shows have the capacity to exert that inl uence and sustain it for years. Entire generations seem to be dei ned by “silly walks” or “fork handles” or whatever. So it seems inevitable that at some point there’ll be another show that does the same thing.’
Thünderbards, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, 3–26 Aug, 1.30pm, £7–£8 (£6–£7). Previews 31 Jul–2 Aug, £5.
Birthday Girls, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 3–26 Aug (not 13), 6pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7–£8). Previews 31 Jul–2 Aug, £6.
Thrice, Underbelly, Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, 3–25 Aug (not 13), 7.50pm, £9.50–£10.50 (£8.50–£9.50). Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £6. The Pin, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 3–26 Aug (not 12, 19), 6.15pm, £9–£11 (£8–£10). Previews 31 Jul–2 Aug, £6.
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 33