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DESPITE a growing field of contenders,
Pappy's Fun Club have almost certainly retained
their title as the funniest sketch troupe on the Fringe. Without We
Are Klang to offer competition this year, and The Penny Dreadfuls
otherwise engaged with a full-length narrative, Matthew Crosby, Tom
Parry, Ben Clark and Brendan Dodds might have been tempted to coast
on 2007's if.comedy nomination. But Funergy, an apposite compound
of, well, you can guess, reprises all the infectious silliness and
dreadful props with which they made their breakthrough. Craftily evoking
the subject du jour, Pappy, their enigmatic benefactor, has decreed
they must reduce their carbon emissions or he'll shut the Fun Club
down. So they contrive a device to run entirely on fun that will solve
the world's energy crisis. Suffice to say, the quartet have plenty
of both to burn.
After a warm-up spell of knockabout banter, principally
designed to voice their grudges against Nottingham
and establish Brendan's adoption of a blue
whale, there's an amusing general knowledge
showdown between the internet and a wise owl, before we're introduced
to Julian Banjos, a daredevil stuntman in the twilight of his career,
even if he's too stubborn to see the writing on the wall. Impresario
Pappy's various Fringe shows are advertised, including the wholly
conceivable Text Hamlet, but this section is patchy and feels like
water-treading until Banjos can confront his arch-rival, with the
pace livening up until the various threads are pulled together in
a rascally subversive song. It's all so gleefully daft that you can't
help but regress to childish sniggering, especially during the relentlessly
brutal ad-libbing they fling at each other, the four's natural instinct
for the funny honed on the unforgiving stand-up circuit. With each
Pappy bringing something distinctive to this satisfyingly surreal
party, this is first-rate foolishness.
Jay Richardson
Original link: thescotsman.scotsman.com/comedy?articleid=4388438
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