Legends

Sketch comedy is currently enjoying a resurgence (if it ever truly went out of style) and the cast of Legends had the intention to"explore myths and legends ranging from the Boy who Cried Wolf to Prometheus, Atlas to Humpty Dumpty and much more."

The show opened with a teenaged Pandora texting and doing epic eye-rolls at Zeus attempting to leave the infamous Box with her. Zeus accidentally-on-purpose drops the box, unleashing all the evil in the world, and the rest of the show follows on from there (with a cute revisit for a couple of minutes at the end to several of the characters in a world where the Box was not opened).

There were some wonderful moments, among them Santa explaining to his bewildered daughter that he did not, in fact, exist; a mate of Atlas's asking him to help him move on the weekend; Hades checking in with some accursed characters to see how their curses were going (spoilers: not as expected); all the ridiculous things you do in a car when you think the world can't see you; and the world's most laid-back Indie DJ.

The show's style was sleek, fast and minimalist, using only a couple of chairs, a small collection of props and rapid changes in lighting and music to 'reset' between sketches.  The flow between sketches was seamless, not a pause or misstep or dropped word or prop.  

While the cast was more than equal to the breakneck pace and the constant switching between characters, the stand-outs were Carly Milroy and Elliott Roberts, who inhabited their characters with verve, energy and a bucketload of talent.  While Tom McLean and Chris Chosich made solid contributions, their acting was more mannered and occasionally uncomfortable to watch, bizarrely introducing overtones of improv comedy to a what was clearly a highly-rehearsed show.   

The show had some wonderful laugh-out-loud moments, the cast are talented, and the core idea has endless potential.  But there were structural and pacing issues: I came away from the show with the impression that there was too much crammed into just an hour, and the cast/writers were doing more than a little of throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. The fast turnover between skits did not allow many of them to gain much traction with the audience. A couple of the sketches simply did not work or did not follow even their own internal logic - I'm open to absurdist left-turns in comedy, but there has to be some momentum of the ridiculous for it to work.  

The best reactions from the audience came from the longer sketches, or revisiting recurring characters (Carly Milroy's woman-in-car-caught-doing-things was particularly good).  Some judicious pruning and rewriting may be in order, and allowing the pace to ease off could turn this show into a very enjoyable hour indeed.  I overheard one audience member say afterwards: "Wasn't that clever?"   It was, but I would have preferred "bloody funny all the way through" myself.

Alex Armstrong