Simple Town review – these Pythonesque jokers could be your new best friends

Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe New York foursome’s freewheeling logic will have you laughing without knowing why in a fringe debut that’s smart enough to revitalise sketch comedyWith sketch comedy not exactly cresting a wave in the UK right now, why not import some cult-favourite exponents from the other side of the pond? If that were the thinking behind this fringe debut by NYC four-piece Simple Town – well, it might just be smart, fresh and funny enough to revitalise the form. It’s sketch with something of the energy of improv, a hint of an easygoing get together with your coolest friends (OK, far cooler than my friends) – and the kind of freewheeling, elusive-logic comedy with which Sheeps have in recent years sustained sketch’s flagging pulse.Identified as “four teens in their 30s”, Simple Town introduce themselves as they mean to go on: super-casual, faux-naive, coming at one another, and at our expectations, from odd angles. Their first sketch takes us back vaguely in time, to three Nasa bros aghast that a woman has been recruited to their space programme – because “she can do multiplication in her head!”. Like later scenes, this one contains several movements, the borders porous between them, the comic point forever evolving and slipping beyond your grasp. Continue reading...

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