WitTank: Old School Secrets

The title of this latest offering from WitTank, an increasingly caustic sketch troupe who tonight profess their disdain for the young demographic with whom they're most popular, suggests a nostalgic look back at our formative years. In reality, these privileged performers are the products of a boarding school education, and so present us with a brilliantly self-aware hour that proves almost impossible for the average person to relate to. Some among us will have personal experience of teachers who exert an inordinate degree of discipline over their own spawn in a bid to appear fair and even-handed. Others may recognise the sadistic prefects to whom staff members respond with admiring deference. Most, however, will know Old School Secrets’ alien, antiquated world only from the pages of Boys’ Own magazine.

The environment inhabited by their characters is surreal enough that the cast needn’t resort to anthropomorphic orcas or Winston Churchill busts which speak in a Jamaican patois. Still, both crop up and the hour zips by. Slick to a fault, it’s only at certain points that the trio allow themselves to be constrained by the personas associated with sketch comedy. Mark Cooper-Jones shows flashes of being the uninvolved straight man, while comedy nerd Kieran Boyd’s routines have a more classicist, self-contained feel that doesn’t always serve the show as a whole. Token wildcard Naz Osmanoglu is clearly an elemental talent, but given too much opportunity to indulge in improvised outbursts, runs the risk of diminishing returns.