Casual Violence Presents: House of Nostril

With sketch show darlings Pappy’s taking a break from the Fringe this year there’s a gap in the Edinburgh market for an anarchic group of similarly eager and spritely funsters – it’s a space that the equally dubiously-named Casual Violence seem designed to fill.

In House of Nostril the quintet (four onstage and one on keyboards) blur the line between comic play and sketch show to deliver an hour with an impressive laugh rate.

An animated introductory sequence introduces the house in question; the home of a variety of Nostrils, including psychopathic father Roger Nostril, his son Charlie, strange Uncle Gideon and a series of taxidermied forebears.

A fiendish scheme is launched by dastardly Roger to defeat his unlikely mortal enemy—the CEO of Amnesty International—using voodoo dolls. Charlie has no urge to follow in his father’s footsteps and vows to derail “Project Voodoom.”

The story, which ultimately makes not a lick of sense, is really of little consequence other than as a basic framework for increasing silliness. It’s a joy to revel in the performers inhabiting a stream of memorable characters, as a series of quickfire skits take the audience on a tour of the house.

Highlights are plentiful, including a tragic “poison taster,” a very odd invisible goblin and a group of cockney chimney sweeps. Even the obligatory slideshow entertains by becoming increasingly self-aware.

Add just the right amount of corpsing and you have strong foundations for House of Nostril to be a hit.