Suicide & Crumble at Hen and Chickens Theatre

Suicide & Crumble at Hen and Chickens Theatre

26 May, 2009
by: Katuschka

Silly wigs, inexplicably Mexican cockroaches, unconvincing accents and Ray Smears' survival guide. With this random pick and mix of material, segueing from Topic to Topic with the grace of a relapsing chocolate addict, Suicide & Crumble is a fast-paced, surreal sketch show. Held in the intimate Hen and Chickens Theatre, it's a light-hearted Sunday evening knockaround, with a good dose of quirky humour provided by three up-and-coming comedic stars with a smattering of TV, radio and theatre credits between them. These include the accent chameleon Matt Addis (who takes on his Ray Smears persona with a lot of swagger and furniture climbing), the adorably gormless Stasia Buckle and Blake Harrison, who brings some of his fish-bashing, dimwit charm from TV series The Inbetweeners – a fact wryly noted in the introduction, that TV makes people seem funnier and more attractive.

Eliciting a kind of Pavlovian response from the audience, each sketch is accompanied with a short burst of intro music. 'Here Come the Girls' heralds sketches about Vicky Pollard-esque call centre workers; 'La Cucaracha' accompanies sketches about Mexican cockroaches with swine flu masks; and 'Working Nine to Five' precedes a recession-lampooning skit about a dogsbody called Gary who is introduced in increasingly strange ways to the wonderful world of 'sales'. This might seem haphazard, but the trio have worked in a fisherman's knot of a narrative which keeps the show from spiralling off-kilter and allows the cast to indulge in some amusingly bizarre asides.

The show's highlights are when it's at its most surreal; the sketch set in a fruit bowl with an orange complaining about a banana spooning him all the time and an Apprentice-themed bee are moments of comedy gold, however at times you sense that the format might be slicker and better suited on a television show, benefitting from the kind of fuzzy dream intro which only TV can provide. You can't deny the enthusiasm of the performers though, the material needs a little tightening here and there, but overall Suicide & Crumble provide you with some wilfully absurd escapism.

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