Ecole Philippe Gaulier and Cambridge Footlights are two of the great comedy finishing schools, manufacturing acts for opposite ends (from clowning to erudite wit) of the humour spectrum. The double act Beard have been to both, which may partly explain the abnormality of this fringe outing, The Grin of Love. Sometimes, it’s strange for strange’s sake, and you’ll wait in vain for anything identifiably comical to happen. Just as often, they spirit into being offbeat – often interactive, often silent – new architectures for comedy, which are set to work with opaque charm by Matilda Wnek and Rosa Robson. I laughed occasionally; I submitted happily to the oddity from start to finish.
They start the show dressed as ghosts, and the spectral atmosphere never quite evaporates. There’s a fun sight-gag of flowers protruding from ghostly eye sockets, before a foothold-free sequence in which Wnek scrutinises sections of an orange till she finds one that’s pregnant. The following few scenes pursue the pregnancy theme, but very obliquely, and not to full-term. It’s soon forgotten. Later, we meet a grandad on his deathbed, playing chicken with his life-support machine, and the audience are treated for head lice by a pest exterminator.
Both those scenes feel underdeveloped. Stronger is the skit about a character who believes herself to be invisible, and the audience questionnaire that must be answered by lobbing beans through hula hoops: both simple, fruitful jokes that, under Wnek and Robson’s playful stewardship, keep on giving. There’s also a spoof lapdance towards the end that doesn’t attack or send up but rather deftly estranges the cliches of female sexiness. It’s pitched halfway between poetic-strange and comic-strange, a spectrum across which the show veers dramatically, and sometimes falls off entirely. But – if more by dint of atmosphere than material – it makes an impression.
- At Sneaky Pete’s until 29 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
