Skit Shared
Stag Hotel
Wed 14 March
Until Sat 24 March


Hmmmm. Pretty sketchy. Local mob Tongue In Cheek has slapped together a rough as guts revue and thought it would be ready in time for the Fringe. It was not. After finding the unmarked venue on the upper level of the Stag Hotel and receiving an ACTU bumper sticker and pamphlet with my program, I was shoehorned into the makeshift theatre contributing to the packed house. There followed eighteen skits in amateur hour style written by the dozen cast members.

The usual fare of tacky television news presenters, novel new things like Desert Cubes, pain-in-the-butts like telemarketing by cultural neophytes, and Liberal-bashing was served. I don't think I even laughed eighteen times.

The highlights of a bad bunch were Simon Davey in Simon Davey's 'The Waiter', the biting political satire of 'Dogsbody Obedience' written by director Patrick White and a news feature on fake fairies created by Brenton Priestly. Never gaining traction, the night was capped with an entertaining song and dance take on Gitmo.

Tongue In Cheek treaded on that thin line between bad taste and just bad with an innocent joy. It's all right to fool first year uni students with work of this calibre, but if you're actually asking people to part with their hard-earned Fringe ticket dough, I think more than this sort of skit is required.

David Grybowski