Lebensmüde - A Comedy Show

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Promising sketch trio Lebensmüde know how to put on a damn good show. Providing serious value for money at the Free Festival, they structure their pieces so that they flow nicely, ramping up the speed and dropping in some recurring characters near the end to keep us interested all the way to the moving finale. A clear highlight is Freya Parker’s Geordie Steve, whose love of Celeste Dring’s quite subtly portrayed Viv is full of broad laughs and heartbreak in equal measure. Ed Kiely is just as strong, breaking the third wall in his portrayal of Steve’s South African friend with the right amount of knowingness; it's enough to boost the laughs but not so much that it becomes tired.

A sketch on schadenfreude gives Parker and Dring an opportunity to play with accents to wring out every laugh and send up TV conventions. The rest is a little variable – the radio presenter and the performance poet are forgettable, but they do speak to the group's capacity for satirical commentary on top of more memorable character work.

What’s most exciting here are the performances. Parker is a bouncy, ebullient delight, complemented nicely by Kiely’s wryness and Dring’s affecting, emotion-laden detail. The missing ingredient is possibly just a unique tone or identity to really get excited about, as is sometimes necessary to make an impact among the sketch group masses. As it is, this is a strong offering, demonstrating potential for Lebensmüde to become a compelling force in the future.