Review by Steve Bennett

This talented four-strong team perform a series of sketches, linked by an episodic and self-referential pastiche about the lives of performers at the Edinburgh festival.

The usual lampooning and japery are present and there is also plenty of social satire and political comment of an unusually thoughtful nature.

The beginning of the show is laboured and clumsily contrived, but the quality of the writing and the inventiveness of many of the sketches soon become apparent.

The performances are generally of a high standard and that holy grail of sketch shows, a complementary blend of comedic and acting skills, is achieved.

Sketches are a mixture of the clichéd and the splendidly subversive, and boast some very clever and incisive parody.

The Ibiza sketch was a particularly fine piece. The ensemble attacks a number of society's prejudices and assumptions with varying degrees of success, some of the material being underdeveloped or obtuse. However, there is plenty of intelligence and passion being applied to the issues the show covers.

The idea of the central story actually works quite well, but is where the writing has some of its weaker moments. Nevertheless, it does contain a critique of the Festival's drug-addled, sex-obsessed, power-crazed dark heart that is refreshingly candid.

The Invisible Bob Show challenges the audience as well as making them laugh, encouraging them to think whilst they are being entertained.

This is a show deserving of a bigger audience providing that the dreadful closing number vanishes like the eponymous Bob.

Review date: 1 Jan 2002
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett