Men Of War

A new sketch group with a consistently high hit rate, Men Of War  are a late-night treat brimming with ingenious setups, performed by a seasoned cast marshalling all their Fringe experience in wringing maximum laughs from their skits.

Assembled from other ensembles, Stephen Harvey, David Schaal, Cariad Lloyd and Gareth Kane nevertheless display a tight, intuitive understanding and finely honed sense of collective timing, their exaggerated character studies and embarrassing encounters pitched with just the right amount of initial seriousness. Their most memorable sequences have elegantly simple premises: the father meeting his daughter’s new beau with a grim hobby; an officious taxman ill-equipped for public speaking struggling to complete his lecture; a rock star so inebriated he can’t see a groupie for what she really is.

Drunkenness is a recurring theme, in fact, though it’s invariably a launching point for some elaborate surprises. Elsewhere,  their preoccupations are more familiar: the real identities of grooming paedophiles; a crass television shopping channel; a wannabe Jack Bauer-style fantasist. But there’s almost always a fresh character angle or memorable line to maintain interest.

Their Mad Men spoof is self-reflexive and archly funny, remaining just the right side of self-indulgent. But elsewhere they’re daft simply for the sake of being daft, a none-too-complimentary portrayal of Pam St Clement being a case in point. The acting undoubtedly raises the material—Harvey is superb as an old buffer unwilling to acknowledge the sun setting on the British Empire—but this is a debut with huge potential.