By Carmel Shortall
Northern Droll’s longer-than-usual sketches are clever and entertaining rather than laugh-out-loud funny but there is some strong material here.
A customer who is always right demands a refund for a haircut he had five years ago. Two wurzels nailed to a gate take a break from saying “Ooh Aaar!” long enough to realise they’re really two stockbrokers from Guildford. A character on a five-day binge plumbs the depths for gin-based puns. And there’s an undertaker who ‘sees dead people’.
There is the inevitable ‘meta-comedy’ sketch about two comics trying to write a sketch and this bleeds into the chaotic final sketch which peters out and is sadly something of an anti-climax.
However, there are strong comic performances especially Tom Burgess as the pedantic customer. Sam Nicoresti directs and Lizzie Milton is busy once again as both performer and producer (see 10 Days Earlier, reviewed in the previous post).
Northern Droll is at the Camden Head at 5pm every day until 12 August. Tickets are £7.50 and concs are £5.
