Originally billed as a three comic package show, Tearing Up the Social Fabric was reduced to the double act of Dianne Armstrong and Chris Cole. It was through stand up, sketches and song that the duo explored politics, topical issues and societal observations.
Filmed sketches were inserted throughout the hour that were wonderfully absurd one joke pieces. Their short length suited the material perfectly and despite a couple of punchlines that could be seen coming from afar, were hilarious. A number of surreal flashes popped up during the show to keep us on our toes that were quite good too.
Dianne’s stand up spots were essentially a greatest hits package of sorts that contained quite a few misses and a large amount of dated topical material. She didn’t even attempt to disguise the age of the older gear, instead delivering them as if the event had occurred yesterday. Even after a few years on the stand up circuit, Dianne continues to employ an odd structure to her jokes where she inserts a comment after the punchline, leaving silence between the jokes rather than finishing each on a laugh. There were times when she delivered a sequence that we expected would lead to a joke only to finish with the comment ‘No joke there…’ We could have done without these pointless items of filler.
Chris sang a couple of songs that didn’t actually contain any funny material. Dianne did the same but at least he accompanied himself on guitar and tried to ham it up a little. Where Chris showed a glimmer of promise was in his character work during the sketches. You could tell he had some talent, albeit in a wacky uncle showing off to the children kind of way, but he was definitely restricted by the material and Dianne’s somewhat limited character range.
The sketches themselves were a mixed bag in terms of laughs, generating the odd moment of hilarity, and generally over long. In particular the epic Osama Bin Laden sequence that closed the show revisited the same stereotypes and jokes over and over and could have been trimmed considerably. You could see the that ideas were there but they were merely scrapping the surface of most topics, failing to dig deeper for potential comedy gold. At times it seemed as if they were writing for the lowest common denominator rather than attempting to say something new and interesting. This was disappointing as I hadn’t come across too much political humour in my festival journey thus far.
This was a show of potential that didn’t deliver.
Visit the comedy festival website for bookings and further details