Review: The Delightful Sausage: Regeneration Game

Comic duo invite you to be part of their rambunctious community

★★★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 12 Aug 2018

You arrive as The Delightful Sausage as a member of the Ickleton community group, called to a meeting to discuss how to put the beleaguered town on the map. Chris Cantrill and Amy Gladhill are our leaders, outlining the site's history in a very funny video and encouraging ideas for social regeneration. They trade on their Northern-ness, partly via their mocking of cultural disparities across the north-south divide, but mainly through their use of language that has those comic rhythms prevalent outside of the English capital.

But this structure is little more than a conceit. A middle section recounting a quickly degenerating camping trip is funnny in itself, but clearly has no connection to the narrative that bookends it. More than that, its surreal depictions are of a different tone to the rest of the show. But this is a small blip in a rambunctious and delightful show that displays considerable comic deftness and the performers' funny bones. Sometimes when those on stage are so obviously enjoying themselves it can come off as indulgent; here it's infectious, creating the very commonality the show is predicated upon.

Their charm belies the cutting barbs they aim at one another, and at the culture of the Fringe itself. But on the whole this is a relentlessly silly show, crafted with considerable care and delivered with aplomb. It's time to join the community and give Ickleton the fame it deserves.