Tea and Cake
Tiernan Douieb and Lauren Shearing
Underbelly @ 14:50, Aug 2-26 (not 15), (55mins), £8.00 (£7.00), £9.00 (£8.00)
***
Aaaah cuppa tea… Mmmm cake… yummy tasty goodness…
Don’t let the cheery title fool you ‘cos if there’s one thing that this show doesn’t have a great deal of, it’s good taste. Although, I hasten to add, this is a good thing.

There’s dark humour, and then there’s Tea and Cake. So devilishly dark, so absolutely pitch black in its context that Douieb and Shearing’s themes could swallow you up whole if you dared to consider them fully. Thankfully, their delivery lightly floats above the deep dank pit of their material so that you might never notice the horror of it all.

The pair, winners of television comedy competition “Gagging 4 It”, happily bounder through natty little costumes, hats and wigs as though this was something so much gentler than it is. The sketches are broadly spun, touching upon a wide range of hellish situations and characters, interwoven throughout by linking scenes where they play themselves but with murderous intent.

If I tell you that one particular sketch is centred around being a hostage in the middle-east, then you’ll start to understand what I’m getting at. If I explained why Lauren was unable to take a bow at the curtain call, then you’d certainly get an idea of how dark their humour is, but I won’t of course because that would ruin its shock value.

When they launch into a sketch and plonk on their Viking helmets, I’m reminded of how this cheery plastic headgear has become associated with reasonably jovial fare over the years, but it is the raping and the pillaging that these two focus their attention on. In their defence though, I don’t think they are just playing at shocking an audience, but they do seem to enjoy toying with them a little.

This show is not a riotous hour of mad-cap laugh out loud comedy so don’t expect to be rolling in the aisles. Do however expect to be challenged in a way only comedy truly can, this pair are demonically dark, in the same breed as Chris Morris. Laugh if you dare.

by Ian Phillips

The National Student's
2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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