Evening Standard, 23-Aug-07

A MADCAP HOUR OF FUN THAT COULD BE AWARD BOUND - * * * *

If there was an award for Most Inventive Use of Audience Participation, Pappy's Fun Club would have it sewn up. Instead they will just have to make do with the prestigious if.comedy Award nomination they received yesterday afternoon. For now, anyway. Who is to say that they won't win the top prize when it is announced by Christian Slater at midnight this Saturday?

Sketch shows are often hit-and-miss, but this madcap hour is much more hit than miss. Matthew Crosby, Tom Parry, Ben Clark and Brendan Dodds have an instinctive rapport and riff off each other with alarming ease. The quick changes are sometimes so quick the players return half-dressed, but this all adds to the general air of merriment.

Highlights include Tom Parry's over-excited, malevolent Tax Inspector, Crosby's barely recognisable Abraham Lincoln and the aforementioned piece of audience participation, which involves the act leaving the stage and handing the show to their fans.

Look out, too, for an ingenious wordplay-packed meeting between the directions Left and Right. As for Pappy's Fun Club, there is no doubt that the only direction they are heading is up.

Bruce Dessau

Original Link: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/comedy/...