It’s News 2 Me
Smugly Beige
C Too @ 10:00 7th – 12th £6.50 (£5.50)
****
Its newsroom breakdown in more ways than one as two anchors and their idiotic weatherman come to blows. There are three strong comic acting talents in the making within this team. Some of the timing needs a little tweaking, but none of the ideas have been left short, and there have been plenty of opportunities explored within the well crafted script.

With gags aplenty, both in speech and movement, the pace is unrelenting. Where Smugly Beige have truly pushed the boat out is in their physical comedy, it’s well rehearsed, finely tuned, and there’s great action with props, food in particular. Their appetite for visual gags shows great potential although one particular costume joke appears shoehorned and comes confusingly from nowhere.

The conceit of unexpectedly resuming the transmission breakdown from time to time, leads the pace and development of the play but doesn’t really work fluidly. The action could perhaps have been better positioned behind the background glass façade so frequent in the rolling news genre.

The players within Smugly Beige display great talent, sense and ability; they possess a courageous in their performance that will take them far. They will surely continue to prove themselves very successfully in the future. We certainly haven’t seen the last of these great new comic talents.

by Ian Phillips