Ginger and Black: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Harold

Ginger and Black, aka Eri Jackon and Daniel Taylor, aren’t the most excitable comedy duo to grace the Fringe. They amble onstage looking utterly unimpressed, introduce themselves and begin a sequence of sketches set in World War Two. These feature some amusingly outlandish characters such as ‘Hawk Man’ and the war veteran whose ‘shrapnel injury’ has left him with a dinner fork protruding from his head. Beginning with Harold, a small boy whose father is due to leave for the front line, the story focuses on his dad's attempts to dodge the draft via some ridiculously extreme measures.

 

It’s funny and imaginative stuff that works precisely because Jackson and Taylor play each of the many characters in exactly the same deadpan style, making them and the situations they find themselves in seem even more surreal. At one stage, they ask the audience questions, only to run into the crowd and answer the questions themselves into a roving mic. At another, an audience member is asked to play a role in the story, which consists of his photograph being taken and used for a few seconds on a screen. Immensely silly, yes, but extremely effective too: and the duo have bags of this sort of anticlimactic comedy up their sleeves. The narrative gets lost somewhat in the process, but it matters little. After all, the audience turned up for laughs, not a war epic, and Ginger and Black certainly deliver in that field.