Boris & Sergey II: Perilous Escapade

121329 original

Two leather, faceless puppets with an appetite for chaos and a propensity towards foul language made for an unexpected hit last year. Silly, highly skillful and five-star-funny, Boris & Sergey's Vaudevillan Adventure makes a welcome return this year. But 2013 also sees Flabbergast Theatre persuing a parallel strategy for their creations in a new show – in particular, they've moved over a wadge of cash into the budget headed 'set and props'. But what false accounting: the move has decimated those accounts headed 'jokes', or 'plot'.

It's not that Flabbergast are resting on their laurels, and clearly a great deal of effort has gone into projecting team Boris & Sergey towards their next advenure. But that effort seems to have settled on the task of showing just what proficient puppetteers the team can be. Insufficient, apparently, is the delight of watching these uncanny marionettes appearing to run. We must be shown this from all six angles until we marvel at the dexterity, or until the song ends – whichever cracks first. Manipulating a puppet in flight requires the operators to knot and unknot themselves. Check that choreography. Did you see it? Well, here it is again. A sequence with a floating orb grinds away for five minutes before a phyric payoff in which the ball hits the puppet on the head.

This truly is rambling, self-indulgent spraff – the worst of physical comedy from some of its better proponents. Scant moments of well-scripted, pacy drama hint at this ability, and point glaringly to its absence here.