Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

As a title, Low Effort Sketches doesn’t quite come across as ironic as its stars Alice Wickersham and Andy Bucks might have intended.

They certainly don’t put much exertion into the acting, a conscious choice to make every character speak in knowing detachment, fully aware that they’re in a sketch, such as cartoonishly stammering ‘w-w-w-w-what?’ or putting zero emotion into: ’Aargh! there’s a spider in my room.’ The only other place people talk like this is on local radio adverts. That last one sets up a scene in which the pair very deliberately undo gender stereotypes, sailing close to being smug but with a decent payoff which forgives that.

The show is a mixed bag, with a few good puns, the occasional social point (not always so subtly made) and some skits that make single jokes stretch to a couple of minutes. The bus driver training bit, for example, is, good for a few lines but not a full scene once the punchline’s been revealed. 

’A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,’ similarly overeggs its alternative, increasingly graphic, variations on the theme. However, their take on spelling things out using the phonetic Nato alphabet, while not entirely original, is taken to interestingly absurd places, albeit with a slight air of ‘look how clever we’re being’. 

Bucks, a former member of Cambridge Footlights, and Wickersham, a London-based data scientist, wear their smarts on their sleeves, and usually have a have a quick chat as ‘themselves’ after each sketch. The pared-back style feels very much of the conventional old-school ‘…and blackout’ style which used to be synonymous with Radio 4 before the broadcaster took strides to get more interesting.

There’s some audience participation with the Invagination Game - in which punters are asked to name parts of the anatomy that fold in on themselves, though there’s no real end point… it just sounds like someone has learned a new word that's got 'vagina' in it.

And we end with them screeching the Circle Of Life for no particular reason – a rare moment put their shoulders into an over-the-top performance. Again, this has absolutely no point, but that’s an asset in this instance.

But because this is so different from their more self-consciously underplayed scenes, it underlines the fact that Low Effort Sketches is still in need of a distinctive comedy style they can call their own. At the moment, they are too strongly echoing those who have gone before them.