Gullibility Factor

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Sometimes, in the very darkest of places, you can hear the voice of God. Perhaps it was this voice that restrained the small audience who, after the opening sketch of Gullibility Factor—a sketch so excruciatingly bad as to seem desperately overlong even though it clocked in at well under ten minutes—seemed to pray for an exodus. Or a plague of locusts. But Christian values still run deep in our society, and so we turned the other cheek.

Unfortunately, the Lord works in mysterious ways. And so it came to pass, in the close confines of Augustine’s—better known to locals as Augustine United Church—that the sacred cow of live comedy was sacrificed for what one can only assume was some obscure Greater Good. The worst things come in threes, and Gullibility Factor’s unholy trinity united a woeful script, clumsy production and some deeply unconvincing acting.

Towards the end of a seemingly interminable hour, one began to wonder about the show’s title. Was this all a big joke? Did the gullibility in the title refer to us, the mugs in the audience who were asked to fork over eight of our hard-earned pounds for the dubious pleasure of an hour in the Wireless Theatre’s company? And then, a revelation. This was no joke, but rather a fearsome warning from a figure whose words go largely unheeded in Edinburgh at this time of year. It was the voice of God: “look on my works ye Mighty,” He seemed to be saying, “and despair!”