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Blog News, reviews and cool stuff from the FestBuzz team.

Festbuzz Review: Superclump

Posted by elise on August 20, 2009

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What: Super­clump fea­tur­ing  Henry Paker, Henry Widdicombe,Sian Har­ries, Mike Woz­niak, Elis James, Ben Par­tridge, Tom Craine, Josh Wid­di­combe, and Nat Luurt­sema.
Where: The GRV
When: 2.40pm, until Sun­day 30 August
How Much: £5

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “If they can just get the tim­ing as fast as a speed­ing bul­let Super­clump will become a sketch group of steel.”

I’m not sure how many peo­ple are in Super­clump. I could find out but I pre­fer to be hap­pily daz­zled and mys­ti­fied by the array of char­ac­ters this large and enthu­si­as­tic cast play.

This is a bizarre sketch show, with some Big Train-ish moments and lash­ings of stu­pid dances. It holds together well, but the pac­ing some­times loses its way, leav­ing the audi­ence unsure when to applaud. Some sketches were just too long (a bril­liant stand off between two macho lothar­ios loses it’s way try­ing to get to a pun) and oth­ers just too short (the annoy­ing Red Rid­ing Hood and her short tem­pered grandmother).

The act­ing for the most part is pretty strong: Mike Woz­niak is absolutely on top form, and he clearly leads the group on stage. Tom Craine and Nat Luurt­sema get some of the best lines, but it’s a real team effort over­all and there’s some­thing delight­ful about watch­ing sketches where you’re never sure quite how many more peo­ple will end up on stage.

The team are quite suc­cess­ful in get­ting all their per­son­al­i­ties across, despite play­ing a vari­ety of char­ac­ters with­out break­ing the fourth wall par­tic­u­larly often, though it was a charm­ing and reveal­ing moment to see Craine and Elis James corps­ing in the Aesop sketch. It’s clear there is a cen­tral drive to the sense of humour which makes Super­clump great, and with such a large cast they could have eas­ily lost their way with this.

In order to really get the most out of this show, watch out for when sketches take a darker turn: a dance turns bizarrely vio­lent, chil­dren play some very odd games, and just wait until you find out what’s in the party bags…

There are def­i­nitely a few dud moments they could scrap in this show, and it suf­fers mildly from the post-lunch sleepy slot, but when Super­clump shine they really dazzle.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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Festbuzz Review: Idiots of Ants

Posted by elise on August 19, 2009

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Who: Idiots of Ants
Where: Pleas­ance Over the Road 2
When: 8.15pm, daily until 31st August 2009 (not 24th)
How Much: £8.50-£10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “The slick indie band of com­edy have noth­ing left to prove– except their identity.”

I knew I had noth­ing to fear in the capa­ble hands of pop­u­lar sketch group Idiots of Ants: these boys leave noth­ing to chance and their tim­ing is almost per­fectly sculpted. How­ever, as I looked down through the rail­ings in the venue (Pleas­ance Over the Road 2), the feel­ing of being removed from the per­for­mance was unavoid­able. With a strong use of mul­ti­me­dia (music stings, video, pho­tog­ra­phy and other audio-visual trick­ery) this does occa­sion­ally feel like watch­ing a show on TV. The boys have ami­able per­sonae and they are not with­out their oblig­a­tory young female fan base in the audience.

How­ever, not every­one is con­nect­ing with them.

Idiots of Ants’ sketches lib­er­ally ref­er­ence every­thing from sci fi to war films, from pop cul­ture to video games, though this some­times becomes a lit­tle unwieldy, with laughs from dif­fer­ent areas of the audi­ence at dif­fer­ent times. While this shows a broad range of appeal, it isn’t mas­sively cohe­sive and raises the ques­tion of who they are aim­ing their show at.

The strongest sketches lie in unpre­dictable moments: the video game sketch in par­tic­u­lar is a real treat, and the only point when the audi­ence inter­ac­tion really works. It also is invalu­able to see the boys riff­ing off each other in a slightly less rehearsed way. Though the thor­ough rehearsal and strong tim­ing can be appre­ci­ated the­atri­cally, the lack of abil­ity to come fully out of char­ac­ter and engage the audi­ence is what mars this oth­er­wise bril­liant performance.

This is a great hour of excel­lent enter­tain­ment, and it’s both visu­ally excit­ing and most impor­tantly funny. While the finale lacks a really good the punch­line, the energy level never drops and there’s never a lull in proceedings.

Every­one can hope to look for­ward to great things from Idiots of Ants: they are a tight knit group, and if they can just let their fans in a lit­tle bit more and let them find out who they really are, they could go stellar.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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