The Pin

This isn’t sketch duo The Pin’s first year at the Fringe, yet they sometimes seem unsure of themselves, in or out of character. The flipside of this is a pleasing rawness in much of what they do. Wheareas some sketches are spoiled by a lack of polish, others play well into the personas developed by Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen (the remainder of last year's three-piece). One is a simpleton, the other a more intelligent but deluded man aspiring to bigger things, with an unpublished play in hand and recent romantic failure on his mind.

Particular highlights include an over-confident Frank Lampard filming an advert for Gillette and Ed Miliband being awkwardly coaxed through an encounter with Barack Obama. Perversely, the sketches are the most real elements of the show, and the comedy is increasingly found in the structure of the show itself as it falls apart. By the time the hour is up The Pin have shown themselves entirely incapable of performing sketch comedy, resorting to flipping through Ashenden’s childlike ideas for smartphone apps and fictional YouTube videos.

The Pin have a strong basic conceit and some good ideas to fill it with. A lot of the material would be more at home on the radio, and you sense that given the chance the duo would succeed better on the airwaves than on the stage. It is a competent, engaging show which keeps the audience going from start to finish, built around a framework which, with a bit of work, could be developed into a compelling piece of character comedy.