Tommy and The Weeks: Powershow!

Maybe it’s just that Edinburgh is feeling the effects of the credit crunch this August, but the 2008 Fringe seems to be lacking a bit of creativity as far as comedy is concerned. There seem to be few acts taking any risks in a festival awash with playing-it-safe stand-ups. It is for this reason, then, that Tommy and The Weeks, is a breath of fresh air.

Opening in an imaginary Glastonbury, Ed Weeks and Tom Bell are singing 80s power ballads around the camp-fire. While Bell mopes around after being dumped by his girlfriend, Weeks attempts to cheer him up, devising Powershow!, the variety format that will make them stars. After skipping forward several months, Powershow! has been realised – from which Bell and Weeks take their cue to launch into a series of oddball and frequently hilarious sketches.

Bursting with ideas and imagination, this Mighty Boosh-inspired quirky comedy is driven by the chemistry and on-stage relationship between Bell and Weeks. Weeks, in particular, demonstrates a self-assured idiocy reminiscent of Stephen Mangan’s Green Wing character Guy Secretan, while Bell—a wet blanket who "looks like a Quentin Blake drawing”—is a perfect foil. Forever put upon, Bell’s stories push the show forward in new, inventive and often bizarre directions.

This is student humour of the most unashamed variety and will be by no means to everyone’s taste. However, the creativity on show is exactly what the Fringe is crying out for.