H-BAM – Stop Fistfighting, You’re Pregnant

It has to be said that this Irish sketch troupe does have a good way with titles – this year’s show is certainly eye catching. And the sheer size of the group – with up to nine performers on stage at any one time – does lend them a certain standing apart from other groups.

Their show begins and ends on a song – the finale, ‘Making war is just like making love’ ending a particularly delightful and idiotic sketch involving that favourite of all sketch groups, Hitler and pals. The first sketch with the other perennial and recurring favourite of the sketch scene, Jesus and pals, shows brilliant promise, and proves that such a large group can work together on stage. However, they do seem to quite quickly lose their way.

Some of the best sketches in the show are the really stupid ones – the recurring appearance of the pirates who are trying to check in at the airport separately and discretely, but who can’t resist from letting out a triumphant "Aaar!" at the mention of plundering or pillaging. However, other recurring characters do not work so well. Saucy Jack, an Elizabethan character who keeps coming back on to tell his terrible tales, simply works better on paper than in performance, and ends up becoming nothing more than an irritation. It also boasts some of the most annoying incidental music on the Fringe, which doesn’t help matters at all.

The show does pass the hour in grand style, and it’s certainly well performed and executed, but it doesn’t have anything new or original to add to the already overcrowded sketch form.

5.00pm, Smirnoff Underbelly, Belly Button