Penny Dreadfuls
They don't dress like Victorians any more but the Penny Dreadfuls are still Edinburgh's brightest young things
The Very Best of the Edinburgh Festivals 2024
Review: Assembly Hall
Review: Orchestra of Sound
Review: After the Silence
Published 12 Aug 2010
115270 original
Now in their fifth year performing together at the Fringe, The Penny Dreadfuls still come across as the exciting young upstarts of the comedy circuit – still as enthusiastic, still the too-clever-by-half schoolboys Edinburgh audiences know and love. But gone are the Victorian aesthetic and the adventure stories in favour of some matching yellow and black tracksuits for this, their entirely modern new sketch show.
It's a slick production. They shift seamlessly from sketch to cracking sketch in a seemingly casual manner that can only be rigorously rehearsed. The low-budget street racers, the sweet-scoffing kidnappers and the ever-present sex pest are all cleverly interwoven via callbacks and surprise returns so that the show is at once varied and unified. It's the physicality of the comedy, more than the writing, that generates the biggest laughs. Thom Tuck's face in particular is fantastically malleable, and a certain sketch works despite consisting of little more than his facial expressions changing silently in response to a fisherman's gory narrative.
There are one or two sketches that don't quite fit with this otherwise tightly executed show – namely the father and son role-reversal with its smatterings of Monty Python's working-class playwright, and the rather odd Twilight parody. The latter in particular garnered a huge audience response, despite treading on well-worn ground.
Television probably beckons for the Penny Dreadfuls, although in many ways their comedy seems best suited to the stage. After all, who needs a real car when you can roll about stage on a wheely-chair and get twice the laughs?