Toby: A lighter shade of dark

The last time the Daykin sisters performed as Toby, the show ended with Sarah pulling a carrier bag over her head and apparently gasping her last. The wails of grief from Lizzie—finding her sibling slumped at the volcanic climax of an hour-long, or rather life-long, tussle for attention—verged on traumatising.

It was as dramatic a finish as anything at Edinburgh – but this was comedy, and it needed a payoff. So Sarah, attention-craving tormentor of her browbeaten little sister, sprang back to life: a wannabe actress whose latest, cruellest charade would burn the last of Lizzie’s goodwill.

This was par for the course in 2011’s excellent Lucky, a theatrical sketch show in which the frame narrative meant every skit—by turns bad-taste, surreal or tightrope-tense—carried a subtext of poisonous resentment. When the Daykins insist its sequel will be lighter, then, expect something just a shade paler on the devil’s Dulux chart.

“We've really got to be able to have fun this year and not worry about whether we're going to summon up the teeears of the end of the worrrld,” groans Sarah. The last Toby run was something of a test. Back then they were sharing a flat in London, skint and frustrated, and a lot was riding on the Fringe.

Lizzie, who’s hardly the mouse she plays, says: “We worked together at a call centre, then we came back and did work for Toby and we never gave each other a break.”

These days life is happier; they’re living with their boyfriends and they’ve escaped the drudge-work. Yet they’re still not afraid to kick up a fug of bad feeling – sometimes neutralising it with a silly turn, other times letting us stew. That delicate art of creating laughs one moment, then horrified winces the next, is something they’ve honed since their debut in 2010.

“Sometimes we love that reaction,” says Sarah. “But last time there was a continuation of the gasp, then the gasp, then the gasp… and we’d hope to puncture it by the end. With this one we're trying to learn how to have a bit more up and down.”

Inevitably, they’ve split a few crowds. But even more divisive than Toby was the relentlessly macabre Thrice, the trio they formed with Nathan Dean Williams last year. As he was the one writing, the sisters struggled with the lack of creative control. “That was a tough show,” says Lizzie. “We hadn't had time to put some heart and lightness into it.”

This year they’re free to go a little easier on the audience, with the guiding hand of director Stuart Bowden, a physical comic and storyteller. Apart from anything else, the slightly broader appeal he's encouraged is probably best for their sanity.

“I really feel the death,” admits Sarah, prompting a snigger from Lizzie. “Sometimes I'd have that bag on my head and I'd be like, 'You know what? I do want to just die'.”

Even when Lucky found its audience, simulating such enmity each day really took its toll. “I cried after nearly every show,” Sarah recalls. (“No you didn’t, Sarah,” Lizzie cuts in, chuckling. “That’s bullshit!”)

Yet, draining though it is, they find themselves returning year after year to the darker side of humour. It’s the habit of a lifetime for a pair who grew up in Kent idolising the League of Gentlemen, “angry children” who’d spend hours playing made-up characters such as “Leroy” (Sarah) and his carer, or bickering as a divorcing couple.

It was at an early gig that their own estranged parents met for the first time in years – and sure enough, they had to sit through a sketch based on the collapse of their own marriage. What’s so irresistible about making comedy out of real domestic strife? “It just makes it funnier," says Lizzie. "It's more truthful.”

This, clearly, is a family firm that’s not in the business of light entertainment.