After seeing The Voyage of the Narwhal at the Oxford Fringe festival last year, I couldn't wait to get my hands on tickets to The Awkward Silence's newest sketch show, Racketeers, which debuted at the BT Studio last night.
In Racketeers, the sketch comedy trio try their hands at a life of crime. The sea from Narwhal has been replaced with, well, the seaside, where Frank (Ralph Jones) and Micky (Vyvyan Almond) are on the run from infamous gangster, Morris ‘Genuinely Mentally Unwell’ Jackson (Alexander Fox). They end up, not in Harrogate, but in Brighton, where they embark upon a dangerous fish and chip shop-related escapade.
Along the way they meet a host of absurd and peculiar characters in a range of absurd and peculiar situations. One of these situations, involving a train, a cat-breeder and a whole lettuce, had the trio corpsing on stage - one of the dangers of a work-in-progress show, but one that only added to the audience's glee and enjoyment.
Despite being a work-in-progress, and having what could be described as ‘minimalist promotion’ (one Facebook event), the show was completely sold out and the audience were left fighting for seats in that typically British, passive-aggressive fashion. Having accrued a number of four and five star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, been shortlisted for the BBC Writer’s Prize and nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award, The Awkward Silence are clearly making a name for themselves and have no trouble filling a theatre like the BT.
The Awkward Silence may channel Monty Python or BEASTS in their quirky British humour, but they are always refreshingly original. Their writing is consistently intelligent, but whereas Narwhal covered a number of socio-political topics, Racketeers has restrained itself to just the one UKIP rant. Instead, the trio invite you to enter the bizarre world of Racketeers through the creation of 'common expressions' so that by the end of the show, having heard a host of cleverly concocted phrases, you're pretty sure you've been using the term "pissed on my apple crumble" your whole life.
Once you've entered the world of The Awkward Silence, you won't want to leave and possibly won't be able to. I'm not sure that the stories about fish and chip shop owners on BBC Radio 2 this morning, or the fact that the first thing that I saw at work today was an advert for a fish and chip chef, were mere coincidences. The Awkward Silence turn your world topsy-turvy and inside out, all the while making sure you’re laughing at every moment along the way. I hope that Racketeers will be at the Oxford Fringe and other festivals this year, and I’m sure each performance of the show will get better and better and weirder and weirder.