Review by Steve Bennett

The brilliantly assured Idiots of Ants, who, as is now well-documented, got their unusual name from a corruption of ‘idiots savants’, comprise four impressive twentysomething lads, all strong, slick performers who also pay as much attention to the script as they do to their acting.

Tonight, we were treated to some of their greatest hits: the new fathers being trained in ‘dad jokes’, the invention of the motorcar being received with amusing childishness, and the lads upset at being usurped by a baby. All take relatively simple ideas, yet tease out joke upon joke from them, without quite bleeding the concept dry. This is never more so that in their scene in which four girls wake up after a hen night to discover that they’ve drunkenly had a sex-change operation: an irony-laden sketch which playfully has the women in the audience alternately booing or nodding in agreement as they niggle away at some gender stereotypes.

All these scenes – with the possible exception of their Where’s Wally? one-joke weak link – have the potential to be future classics, and the hard-working Idiots have them all down to a T.

Review date: 19 Nov 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Bar FM