“I’m just laughing,” a tittering Robert Florence stops to tell us, “at the thought of any tourists coming to see this show.” Reader, I am that tourist – at least in that, not living in Scotland, where this sketch show was broadcast, I’m far less familiar than the audience with the residents of Florence and Iain Connell’s fictional Glasgow district.
There’s no doubt that Burnistoun Live – visiting the fringe after a successful tour – is primarily for fans of the TV show. Some characters (Connell’s bedroom-bound internet star Jolly Boy John, say) barely make sense out of context. But I still found plenty to enjoy in the duo’s brusque humour, which couldn’t be more Glaswegian if “Clyde-built” came stamped on every punchline.
You’ll look in vain for stagecraft, or even a well-constructed sketch. One skit about two men chatting at a silent disco establishes its (decent) joke early, then just repeats it; we wait in vain for a surprise. The comic point proves elusive in their final scene, a wholly unconvincing spoof play about the theatre that exists mainly to propel Florence and Connell into compromising encounters with the audience.
But while it’s slapdash, there are choice moments, and the duo’s artless repartee – the conversation about One Direction lyrics, the policemen talking down a would-be suicide – is often disarmingly funny. And, in the scene featuring a depressive yoga coach, who says of middle age that “you start to resemble a version of yourself that the work-experience boy at Greggs made out of pastry”, there’s coal-black comedy to burn.
- At Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh, until 14 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
