Live! At The Mauseleum

Live! At The Mauseleum begins with a warning: everything that happens in this show is entirely your own fault. It’s all taking place in the audience’s imagination, you see.

Double act sketch shows as a rule live or die on the dynamics of the pairing. If their relationship doesn’t work, then no matter how well written or performed the show is, it’s not going to succeed. Happily, the pairing of Cicely Giddings and Abigail Burdess works wonderfully.

They open with "spooky questions", striking mysterious poses and saucepan lids together to emphasise the other worldlyness of the situation. This sketch, like all the others, tips over in to surreal excess. The ideas are taken to breaking point, and then pushed off the edge, so the original premise of the story is lost amid the emotional or logical collapse of the characters or situation.

One particular sketch, involving a Fringe actress who is telling stories of previous successes that soon prove to be less than the glamour she’s trying to imply, soon turns on it’s heel as a member of the audience starts to heckle. With a pie. By the time the sketch ended, we were quite literally in tears.

The great appeal of this show is that just as you feel like you’ve got an idea of what’s going on, or just as it seems a sketch is about to finish, everything changes. The pair are brilliant performers, taking it in turns to outshine the other. The blank, vacant stare on the face of the clown, who has only entered the entertainment business because her various failed suicide attempts have amused and entertained, is something that will stay with you for hours after the show.

5.30pm, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Billiard Room