Review by Nione Meakin

They could do with broadening the scope of their material, but the second show from this energetic three-piece is a giddy delight nonetheless.

Mixing Mutant Turtle eulogies with Shrodinger’s cat and Kylie Minogue with Where’s Wally, their pop culture mash-up is studenty in tone but delivered with disarming flair. Video shops become the settings for grand operas, doctors’ surgeries the backdrop for a superhero face-off; there is singing, and dancing and some charmingly shoddy costumes.

The group owes a large debt to Pappy’s and other forebears, whose goofing and corpsing they have adopted along with their lo-fi aesthetic and knockabout silliness.  Their slapstick meanwhile is reminiscent of vintage Bottom and there are traces of Chris Morris’s The Day Today in spoof TV history programme Foundabout.

Nothing wrong with any of that – excellent references one and all – but when coupled with overfamiliar sketch tropes like fairytale characters and sinister toys, it makes the show feel less fresh than it ought to.

They are at their best in the more absurd and quick-fire gags. A yawnsome joke about the Kinder Egg slogan has an entirely unexpected pay-off and if you don’t find the utterly childish eye patch gag funny, you have no place watching comedy.

All three are engaging performers who each bring a pleasingly different dynamic to the group but it’s the bespectacled James McNicholas who really stands out, his deadpan demeanour offsetting a wild energy that courses through each sketch he appears in.

There’s room for improvement here – not least in finding inspiration beyond the parameters of comic books and TV programmes  – but BEASTS are definitely ones to keep an eye on.

Review date: 16 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Nione Meakin