The Mayor and His Daughter @ Assembly Roxy
A Genuine Appreciation of Comedy is a wilfully obtuse debut Fringe hour from sketch duo The Mayor and His Daughter
In a quaintly miserable village lives The Mayor (Ciaran Chillingworth) and his daughter (Kit Finnie); a man obsessed with introducing himself, and his sullen, wine-obsessed, Robbie Williams fan of a teen. It’s an unremarkable place, despite a hint of Summerisle, and the village may be saved from a life of dullness when the duo find a mysterious relic – an abandoned boxset of Russell Howard’s Good News (Series 2) on DVD.
That’s the conceit at least, but in reality, there’s so much going on and yet so little to grasp on to that this fun throughline doesn’t get the chance to breathe. It almost feels like there are two separate shows vying for your attention – a narrative hour about this Wicker Man-esque place, à la The Delightful Sausage, and a completely separate sketch show in a more traditional format.
There’s an admirable quality to A Genuine Appreciation of Comedy, in that it’s willing to try so much stuff in one hour: there’s pasta personality tests, pig-headed men and a sentient milk carton with asides driven by both of our hosts too. Yet it all feels too untethered to be really cohesive with the narrative.
And for us, there are just too few punchlines for it not to feel like a drag. Leaning into silence and anti-comedy is tricky to master and it’s understandably not to everyone’s tastes, but usually your fairweather comedy audience are occasionally thrown life rings to grip on to. Not in this show, though.
If alienating, avant-garde ‘sketch’ is what you’re after, absolutely give it a go. But if you’re after a genuine appreciation of tightly written gags, it might not be the one for you.
The Mayor and His Daughter: A Genuine Appreciation of Comedy, Assembly Roxy (Snug Bar), until 24 Aug, 4.10pm, £8-12