Burnistoun Live @ Gilded Balloon
The level of anticipation is high for the Fringe show based on TV's Burnistoun, with a queue around the block outside the Gilded Balloon – however, the live show is not nearly as slick as the crowd expects
Despite occassional live revivals, it is now four years since the last Burnistoun TV series. It's understandable, then, that Iain Connell and Robert Florence might be a little rusty; however, too often tonight they just aren’t that well prepared. Connell is sweaty and nervous throughout, seemingly knackered after the second sketch – a routine set in a silent disco lasting several minutes that may have made a better finale. Both he and Florence take a while to get back on track after that, fluffing lines and getting their timing wrong in at least half of the dozen or so sketches that make up the hour.
They just about have the charm to get away with it and there is some fun to be had as they corpse and comment on their missteps, and deal with dodgy props and costumes. These are suitably cut-price versions of the ones they enjoyed on telly – this is the Fringe after all – but it’s telling that a moustache that keeps falling off in a sketch starring useless coppers the Quality Polis (here trying to stop a man from jumping off a building) provides more laughs than the sketch itself. At times like this, it felt more like watching a half-hearted improv workshop than a ticketed live show.
And this underlines the main problem with the hour: the material is just not up to the same standard as the best of the TV show, the ideas feeling like outtakes rather than gems they've held back. A marriage councillor who talks in football clichés and a yoga instructor encouraging people to fret are the weakest in a surprisingly weak set.
Of course, they throw in Burnistoun favourites like the madcap internet nerd Jolly Boy John, who only wants a chocolate banana, or the politicians Calvin Brogue and Morris Coughlin, who disregard policy in favour of taunts about who’s shagging the other’s wife. These are warmly-received, at first, but the laughs soon dry up as the sketches drag on without enough invention. In the end, it's a flat performance lacking in both direction and detail.
Burnistoun Live, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Debating Hall), 4-14 Aug, 9pm, £7-15