COVERING THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL SINCE 1996
Croft & Pearce – There’s Always Something (Vivienne Smith Management)

There’s something lovely about watching performers who’ve been working together a long time, and sketch duo Croft and Pearce establish the kind of practised rapport that only comes from putting in the years together. The show goes to some dark places you might feel guilty for laughing at – the repeated attempts by a pair of middle-class mums to kill themselves in the most British-bourgeois ways possible (we first meet one trying to asphyxiate in a Waitrose bag-for-life) really shouldn’t be as funny as they are. Elsewhere we meet a foul-mouthed Brownie leader, a schoolteacher with an admirer, and a work experience girl with relentless, oblivious bluntness, and while there’s nothing particularly original, what’s here is slick, delightful and very funny.
Gilded Balloon, until 30 Aug.
tw rating 4/5 | [Jon Stapley]
