Review by Steve Bennett

The most famous fact about penguins is that they can’t fly – and nor can this show in their name. Sure, they flap and squawk a lot, but it’s a lot of noise and bluster, and not many laughs.

The trio – Ross Dungan, Aaron Heffernan and Matthew Smyth – have some shambolic charm, and they prove particularly adept at ad-libbing around the music bleeding in heavily from the show next door. But when it comes to what they’ve written down, worked on, rehearsed, and performed dozens of times… well, that’s just an infantile muddle.

They try to give the show some form by saying it all occurred on the same day, February 22 this year, the day of the Oscars, a wedding, an a race meeting, which are somehow intertwined. But they readily admit the narrative is paper-thin, which begs the question: why bother with it? It makes the show seem forced, requires additional bits of business to work that no one needs to hear, and still winds up confusing.

Making sense of what the trio were thinking is impossible. They have one sketch in which two racing commentators are also spies from rival nations, and exchange threats and bartering, but try to make them using horse’s names, so as not to alert the listeners at home. OK, so there’s no logic to the stupidly contrived situation, but there’s no logic to the comedy either – horses can be called anything, so there’s no work needed.

Other ‘plots’, if we can dignify them with the term, are none the smarter, and are all hammily overacted. It’s deliberate, but offers no subtlety, with scenes just descending into shouting or exaggerated physical tics. The performers should have more faith in their natural charisma, rather than stomping around like Timmy Mallett on poppers.

The quietest scene works the best, a will reading in which one of two potential heirs really doesn’t understand what’s going on, but probably only because it so completely harnesses the dim-witted sprit of Craggy Island’s Father Dougal. Elsewhere there are some potentially inventive ideas within the show, but they are largely squandered under the brash pantomime performance.

These Penguins need to p-p-p-p-pick up their ideas.

Review date: 19 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett