MIF15: The Invisible Dot Cabaret @ Pavilion Theatre, Manchester
Manchester International Festival and The Invisible Dot kick off their cabaret with some favourites from the London comedy powerhouse as well as one guy from Preston, while holding the night together is the warming charm of Mae Martin. One of Canada’s current crop of thoughtful and thought-provoking standups, she mixes polite awkwardness with some more risqué material, which is more readily welcomed when delivered with her butter-wouldn’t-melt attitude than it might be from someone less waifish.
First up is Phil Ellis, whose crowd work means he becomes an erstwhile compere for the first third of the evening. (Although Martin is more than affable she rarely speaks to the audience other than to offer the most polite ‘Excuse me’ ever when someone speaks out of turn – putting paid to the stereotype of the overly polite Canadian.) Ellis goes through a mini-breakdown and speaks of the darkness of his life like an ageing gameshow host, something he has perfected during his Edinburgh hit show Funz & Gamez. It is when Ellis falls back on pre-arranged material that he seems to lose the audience, though you suspect Ellis intends this. A great bit about child abduction leaves half the audience cold, but those who are on board laugh all the louder.
Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou then present themselves as the ‘Sexy Dangerous American Girl Cousins,’ a duo of indiscriminate nationality who are here to entertain the troops, apparently against their will – at least that is how White plays it, close to tears as she speaks of being torn away from her family (except for her sister/cousin here on stage). Demetriou’s character is a little more ill-defined, flitting between uncomfortable ingenue and hyper-confident poptart. With bursts of Miley Cyrus punctuating odd, sub-Borat swear pairings, the duo are in need of more robust characterisation. A dance routine finale fails to take away the feel that this is a work in progress.
Headliners Sheeps, on the other hand, are a lesson in how to write and subsequently deliver great sketch work. Their act is part-musical, part-inspirational Hollywood tale and part sports allegory, and they deliver a sense of fun to go with the cerebral and meta nature of most of their short skits. Though their sketches are somewhat anti-climactic they almost aim for this, taking the road less travelled to give the audience a kind of anti-ending that is helped along by the group's easy camaraderie. Their final sketch of 'Splay the boy disaster' is both terrifying and consistently hilarious despite a denouement that includes Liam Williams and Daran ‘Jono’ Johnson just doing a little chicken dance for no particular reason other than to amuse themselves. As well as, thankfully, the packed house.
The Invisible Dot Cabaret runs at Pavilion Theatre (Albert Square), Manchester, 9-11 Jul with this lineup, and 15-17 Jul with a different lineup led by James Acaster