If there’s one thing the Silly Boys (Seamas Carey and Callum Mitchell) are not short of it is courage. Another thing is abundant energy. Another thing is not taking themselves seriously. Another thing is creativity. Another thing is personality. So by all that’s holy they should be slaying ‘em. Why then does this offering fall short of wonderful? Experience tells me experience will be their great mentor and the same teacher tells me they and their director need to get a firm grip. The director needs to have the courage to grip this talent by the scruff and shape it.
There is plenty of ‘Young Ones’ style anarchy and slapstick violence in this road trip story. That’s a seam of comedy which threads its way through the generations and still manages to look fresh whenever it raises its tousled head. Yet for one moment I thought we were going to be treated to some eighties style agitprop railing against Thatcher and the hour before us seemed likely to stretch into four. Eighties punks were never that presentable. Luckily the balm of history had done its stuff and this was going to be, it was soon clear, the tale of a jolly romp from John O’ Groats to Land’s End with a bit of soc doc thrown in for good measure, told by a couple of disarmingly nice, wannabe angry young men who weren’t quite sure of their political target (‘fascists’ or ‘fat shits’) and who wouldn’t put the wind up any respectable young girl’s mum.
Nominally on a fund/profile-raising trip for a local youth charity with the goal of saving Penzance from penury, their adventures include amongst other things; run-ins with midges and starlings, coprophilia whilst tripping on magic mushrooms, a bar fight, beastliness to bunnies and a shag with a Bristol landlady. Leavening the mix is some Tommy Cooper style magic, some incidental music and a song with the catchy refrain. ‘We will save society and be back in time for tea’.
Paradoxically for a road trip there are too many sign-posts. If something is funny the audience will see it with out being cajoled. Similarly the odd and bizarre will seem odder and more bizarre to an audience which is left to its own devices by a cast who get on with their business as if in the ‘best of all possible worlds’. Eccentrics are rarely aware of their own eccentricity and are more eccentric as a result. My final take then is that ‘there is gold in them thar hills’, but it needs a little more mining and refining before it can be buffed into a shine. One day these boys will conquer Edinburgh, but first they need the courage of accepting that old adage that ‘less is more’. ★★☆☆☆ Graham Wyles 24/03/15
