★★
Claire White
Making our way down the never-ending staircases at Espionage, we found our way through to the small cave venue. Separating the audience from the ‘stage’ was only a simple black curtain and on finding your way to the seats, the act were already on stage sound checking whilst the crowd walked in.
What we weren’t prepared for was a whacky hour full of strange songs and high energy from start-to-finish. The two certainly go by their ‘eccentric’ name.
Eccentronic introduced some narrative into the show with ‘the comedy music stool’ which was a clever idea with their handmade ‘slides’ out of paper, yet this faded into the background and wasn’t used well enough throughout. A quirky move that could have worked if it was linked to the show more.
In particular John Callaghan, who held an uncanny resemblance both looks and persona wise to Harry Hill, swung from railings, jumped across chairs, leaned backwards almost doing the splits in areas of the venue and you cannot say he didn’t try to amuse the crowd. It was a strange feeling as the performers were literally in your face throughout the show and those who wanted to sit back and relax had no option to do so!
At many points during the show the music overpowered the vocals making it rather difficult to understand, but it has to be said due to the free venue style they were doing their own technical work via a computer on stage. The lyrics may have been cleverly written, but the understanding was lost through the loud backing track. The addition of the theremin worked well as a unique twist. Tracks ‘Catering College’ and ‘Llanfair PG’ looked like they could have gone somewhere and were in fact catchy songs, but again were overpowered by the loudness of the backing track.
The duo’s version of Sisqo’s popular ‘The Thong Song’ was a moment in the show that somehow managed to work well, with a slower version of the track and almost whispering vocals – it was a moment that did cause laughter with the audience recognising the popular track.
During the show, if any audience members were hungry a toastie machine was set up on stage making cheese toasties for those who fancied a mid-show snack.
The most entertaining aspect of the show was strangely made by an audience member who after being given the (blow-up) ‘hammer of civilisation’ decided to attack two members who had just stumbled across the show. This caused hilarity among the audience as the two people seemed utterly clueless walking in on a room of insanity, shaking pineapples and a blown up hammer whacking them on the head. Not to mention the fact the whole room were singing ‘Aga Doo’. A clear highlight of the show for us that won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
This was a completely different experience to your ‘typical’ Fringe show and we cannot say the duo did not try to ‘rock’ us with their full energy and enthusiasm from start to finish. It is certainly far from mainstream and is one of those whacky shows that you won’t forget in a hurry!
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