How Do I Get Up There?: Avant Garde

As audience members take to their seats for How Do I Get Up There?'s inaccurately titled Avant Garde show, they are treated to pre-recorded video footage of the trio preparing for the performance 'backstage'. The intricacies of the sketch troupe's dynamics are revealed through the looped projection. The conventionally attractive duo of Chris Forbes and Kevin Mains dick around in an immature fashion, mugging to the camera. James Kirk sits beside them. Short, overweight and with a head of ginger hair, he quietly reads a novel and sips a mug of tea.

Though not an official part of the show, the purely visual introduction may as well be, such is the tendency for the troupe's sketches to consist largely of undeveloped ideas and two-dimensional characterisation. When the young Scots take to the stage dressed as Chav/Monk hybrids, they simply dance around to techno music, brandishing bottles of Buckfast. Other sketches explore the humour implicit in swearing babies and inappropriate call-waiting music. Spirited, skilful performances and unwavering self-confidence apart, How Do I Get Up There?'s show is consistently hampered by unremarkable material.