Idiots of Ants: The Red Button

With a hard-earned reputation to uphold, sketch quartet and 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Award nominees Idiots of Ants have returned with another stand-out show.

Multimedia trimmings are used heavily throughout The Red Button, but never as a crutch. Instead the rapid-fire series of video clips and subtitles blend in seamlessly with the comic performance.

Ingeniously, the show is presented as a scene selection feature from a DVD menu. A giant screen acts as our television, and in the opening minutes a member of the audience is given a huge remote control with which to choose which sketches to watch.

Idiots of Ants’ style of humour is bizarre and more than a little childish, but as a result of brilliant writing and pitch-perfect delivery they’re able to pull off pretty much every sketch in their repertoire. Seemingly simple routines, such as acting out a scene from Reservoir Dogs while the characters brush their teeth, are never allowed to go stale. More complex ones, including an extended scene in which the Ants provide handmade sound effects to a silent movie, go down equally well.

Aside from a few occasions where audience members are dragged on stage as part of the act, there isn’t really as much participation as the unusual format might allow. Fortunately, things are kept lively and entertaining throughout.

As the long list of technical staff credited on the fliers would suggest, this was clearly a difficult production to put together. The end product is without a doubt one of the best sketch shows this year’s Fringe has produced.