Greedy
Unrestricted View
Underbelly @ 17:00, Aug 2-26 (not 14), (55mins), £9.00 (£8.00), £10.00 (£9.00)
***
Following their raves reviews of last year; I’ve been led to believe that this is a must see sketch show of the festival, so I was very disappointed to discover that they can in fact be easily missed. There are some nice ideas here, but they’re littered about amongst what I found to be a distinctly average range of sketches.

There is, however, one truly brilliant idea that shines through and appears at several points within the show; it often pops up when you least expect it and it’s an absolute joy when it does catch you by surprise. Like most great comedy concepts, it is sheer simplicity sprinkled with a tiny pinch of the bizarre and that makes it a real winner… that and a lovely bit of whistling.

Unfortunately most of the other skits are a bit too run-of-the-mill for me to be raving about them. A scene set within an office that turns sexual harassment concepts on their head, haunted house shenanigans, a bit about how quickly a woman can shape and interpret a relationship in her head and a dance-off sequence that drags itself out way beyond where my patience and humour was willing to follow – all were more able to raise a sigh than a titter from this reviewer. In particular there was an on-going set of sketches where T-Rexes play hide and seek and perform a nativity… again pleasing for some, but remarkably unremarkable for myself – especially as this was the second time I’d seen an attempt at the comedic anthropomorphism of T-Rexes in a week.

by Ian Phillips

The National Student's
2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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