Is it a live show – or an impersonation of a live show? BBC Radio 4 favourite Dead Ringers takes up residency at the London Wonderground, with a compendium of sketches to tickle their fans. Many have already been broadcast; all are recited script-in-hand. Within those parameters, Duncan Wisbey, Debra Stephenson and Jon Culshaw deliver a likable hour of mimicry, in which the voices are always enjoyable, even when the jokes are uninspired.
Of course, we don’t expect the shock of the new from this 20-year-old institution. If we did, Culshaw’s dress sense – he’s wearing a smoking jacket – would soon disabuse us. Give or take a barbed remark from Wisbey, this is genteel satire-lite that couldn’t be more “Radio 4 comedy” (unreflective, a little pleased with itself, blandly non-partisan) if it tried. The opening stages, parodying the Today programme, are full of predictable news-based gags, making sport of sex-mad Johnson, abnormal Gove and policy-free Starmer. Elsewhere, there’s an off-putting fixation on the idea that Andy Murray is dominated by his mum.
But then, public figures of all stripes are subject to the same complacent waggery. “The world’s first woke Moomin”, they call Greta Thunberg, which is lazy and dispiriting on multiple levels. Thank goodness for the quality of the impersonations, particularly Culshaw’s, whose PM, Farage, Huw Edwards et al are beyond uncanny. Wisbey pitches in with Chris Whitty, presenting the gameshow Next Slide, Please, while Stephenson gives us Laura Kuenssberg in sexual ecstasy at the convolutions of the Brexit debate.
Proceedings pep up when the trio set down their scripts and take audience suggestions. The spontaneity, and a sense (however small) of who the performers are, is welcome. So, too, are the songs in the second half, which vary the chirpy rhythm. There’s a droll Elbow pastiche and a Mastermind musical. The Today programme is bought out by Disney: cue a pleasing Boris Johnson/Jungle Book mashup and Nicola Sturgeon singing Let Us Go. The show acquires an oomph previously lacking; the music (Wisbey on keys) gives us something new to savour. It’s barely more live than on the radio, but easy – at least latterly – to enjoy.
Dead Ringers Live is at London Wonderground until 29 August.
