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PAPPY'S FUN CLUB - * * * *
It’s been an Edinburgh full of good shows
by good comics. It’s not been an Edinburgh
full of the kind of shows you excitedly text your
friends about the moment you file out of the room.
Which is why this extraordinarily fresh and funny
gang show is causing such a stir.
Pappy’s Fun Club is a load of old nonsense
from start to finish. But, like its recent reference
point, the rambunctious sketch trio We Are Klang,
it’s a nonsense underpinned by careful construction.
The twentysomething quartet – Matthew Crosby,
Tom Parry, Brendan Dodds and Ben Clark –
loll around as we come in. They start with a song.
Pappy is ill, their tax situation is a nightmare,
the Fun Club is in danger. Don’t worry what
that means – it doesn’t mean much.
Just enough to hold in place the sketches, squabbles
and stitch-ups to come.
If you’ve ever seen the Will Ferrell “More
Cowbell!” sketch from Saturday Night Live
– it’s on YouTube if you haven’t
– you’ll recognise a spiritual cousin
in their enthusiastic miming of Bob Dylan’s
never-ending Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis
Blues Again. Childish, you think as it starts
– until it’s made exquisite by the
standout comic chops of Parry.
Other OK ideas – a TV prankster called
Len Taunton; a hospital staffed exclusively by
undercover journalists – are also made exceptional
by the tenacity of their execution. Apparently
throwaway ideas are reincorporated later. The
players’ personalities are always present.
It’s kinetic rather than chaotic. It ends,
perfectly, with the punters being roped into the
Pappy Play finale: “Good luck,” they’re
told, “expressing the onstage chemistry
that we so deftly fake”. Thankfully, though,
they’ve been faking it for three years:
the experience shows.
There are a few flat moments, and the show appears
to be very much driven by Parry (red-cheeked,
preposterous) and Crosby (compact, controlling)
with the other two looking larky in between. Unlike
most Fringe comics, they’ve got nothing
to say about jihad, global warming or their girlfriends’
private parts. Instead, Pappy’s Fun Club
does exactly what it says on the tin. And it’s
glorious stuff.
Dominic Maxwell
Original Link: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/...
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