Meta-comedy double act the Pin impressed on last year’s fringe with a show posing as a workshop on how to construct sketch comedy. It was let down only by a few scenes that failed to honour the concept. There is no such problem this year, as Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden return to clever-clever sketch-bending, and sustain it – nay, escalate it – for the whole hour.
I think “clever-clever” applies; the pair are quite aware that convolution can look smug, and enthusiastically send up their self-satisfaction. It’s a risky game they can afford to play, because their tricks really work, and have a substantial comic yield. We’re on their side from the off, after a wham-bam start where Owen and Ashenden demonstrate what this odd idea – the sketch – is all about. (“Let’s try another of those peculiar scenarios.”) The breathless faux-naivety is droll, but the real hook is the comic intricacy of, for example, a sketch mocking the theatre convention of the vertical bed, or the three-person scene in which our two hosts rotate roles, up-ending hitherto established reality with each new permutation.
The Pin are now on their fourth Edinburgh show, and how they are onstage – the dynamic of their relationship; the personalities they project – is still evolving. Theirs isn’t a clear identity, although all this architectural invention is starting to look like their USP. But they do straight sketches too: there’s a great one about a time-traveller trying to prevent his past self’s life-changing mistake, and a conceptually loopy one about a pointing stick. All fit the pair’s format of a sketch tutorial, which culminates – or runs aground, you might say – with the tricksiest sketch of all: an Escher-like screen-and-stage construction that tapers into its own recursive loop. It’s a measure of the show’s success that you’ll be delighted to follow it there.
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Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 31 Aug. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
