Short and Sweet

You might think the clue is in the title, but the majority of these eight new comic sketches are too long and too bitter.

The dominant theme is death, and this ostensibly light-hearted event is packed with funeral wakes, cremation caskets and psychopathic husbands. That suggests a group of tentative writers, keen to lend their work gravitas by killing off their characters. It takes a long time to reach the morose punchlines, and the already thin writing is stretched to breaking point.

The best sketches (and these are certainly sketches not plays) keep things light and rely on sharply surreal writing rather than over-extended and over-engineered comic set-ups. Tommy Kearney’s ‘Five One’ is a pertinent piece about PC football hooligans and kicks the night off with zesty dialogue that is rarely matched. Steve Lambert’s ‘Tea and Filth’, is also nicely observed and confidently written. Lambert lampoons the reticence of the English, as a frightfully posh couple tip-toe round a husband’s infidelities. These two pieces are the only ones grounded in reality and are the most surprising and affecting of the night.