The Broken Biscuit
Comedy, it’s not as easy as one supposes but with cheap gags, political satire and innuendo to spare The Biscuit Barrel’s outrageous new production The Broken Biscuit didn’t crumble under the pressure! Get it? Crumble… biscuit?
Well I warned you there were cheap gags.
The show was a wonderful assortment of sketches, written by James Horscroft with contributions from the colourful cast Daryl Reader, Thomas House, Zoë Quilter, Phoebe Waldie-Dicken and Alex Denly Spencer who, like James, are all students at The University of Winchester.
The most hilarious acts were the simplest. In one Thomas stood centre stage while Daryl walked in a circle around him, who in turn dragged James in orbit around himself, “Hello Earth, hello Moon”... “Hello Sun” – the audience erupted in laughter at this perfectly timed, playful quip.
The longer, more character based jokes were reminiscent of Mitchell and Webb’s classic caricature sketches. James and Thomas adorned ‘geezer’ accents to become borderline perverted car enthusiasts; three chairs stood in for the car they so fervently described as they goggled at its exhaust pipe, rubbed themselves on the interior and let out lengthy ‘phoar’ sounds.
The show held itself together with one continuing storyline; a fairy tale. Red Riding hood was sent by her mother (Alex Spencer, who had the perfect likeness of Terry Jones) to buy ‘biscuits and vodka for mother’, which she announced every time she entered the stage in a sickeningly sweet panto voice.
Along the way she met a hungover Sleeping Beauty, a suicidal Humpty Dumpty and a 7ft Dwarf who all found her fairy tale puns infuriating and planned to kill her off. The final scene was a messy biscuit battle. Packets and packets joined the crumbs from preceding acts scattered across the stage as each cast member was killed off.
The disclaimer; ‘SHOW CONTAINS MATURE CONTENT THAT SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE’ only acted as an incentive to see how far they were going to push it. As it happened, further than I thought. A few jokes were embellished with spontaneous improvisation as Thomas admitted after the show; he wasn’t afraid to take the gags to the limit.
One scene in particular in which Thomas played God was close to the mark, with references to Jews and an offhand mention of Down syndrome. But it was in no way malicious and after all, the group are still experimenting.
The £2 ticket price went towards The Biscuit Barrel’s future as they aspire to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I have no doubt that these talented young performers will go far. Prepare to be taken the piss out of, The Biscuit Barrel are coming to a place near you!