Andrew Haydon
posted 5 September 2006

There seems to have been a minor Fringe vogue for Victoriana in comedy in recent years started by the excellent character comedy of The Congress of Oddities. The Penny Dreadfuls - David Reed (blond) and Jamie Anderson (brunette), Humphrey Ker (tall) and Thom Tuck (dashing) - continue the fashion with an hour's worth of Victorian-themed sketches.

Apparently, Aeneas Faversham was originally planned as a comic play based around the titular character of Mr Faversham, but the cast (also the writers) decided that they didn't like that idea much, and so chucked out the main character and plot, and strung together the funny bits as this hugely likeable sketch show.

The register here is not dissimilar to the Victorian-themed sketches that Fry and Laurie used to do, or indeed much of the Regency-set Blackadder III. The cast have nice loud voices and aren't afraid to use them. They could perhaps do so slightly less, but this is a small gripe. In the main, this is a lot of fun. There are plenty of good ideas swooshing about the place, from pastiches of the sorts of secret societies found in the Sherlock Holmes stories, through to the inevitable mockery of straight-laced Victorian morality. I'm not sure they've quite mastered the punchline of a sketch yet, but then neither did the Pythons, and it didn't do them any harm. Overall this is an accomplished show, a pleasant way to spend time, and a promising start for the Penny Dreadfuls.