Gentlemen trio worth every penny for dreadful laughs

Published on Friday 8 August 2008 16:01

MOST performers at the Fringe might be upset if their show was described as showing its age. For the Penny Dreadfuls, a trio of self-described 'gentlemen humorists' who take their name from the pulp comics of the Victorian era, it is their raison d'être. Set in the underworld of 19th-century London, their Fringe show Aeneas Faversham Forever is a comedy play which mixes the Empire, the occult and murder most foul.

"It's like an action movie set in the 80s," explains Penny Dreadful Thom Tuck. "The 1880s."

Tuck and his fellow Dreadfuls, Humphrey Ker and David Reed, are all alumni of Edinburgh University and former veterans of The Improverts, the weekly improvised comedy show which plays at the Bedlam student theatre. They formed The Penny Dreadfuls on the basis of a shared appreciation of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Flashman and Sir Joseph Bazalgette, creator of London's sewage system. In a world where contemporary satirists such as Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais pull in the biggest crowds, the 19th century might not be the most obvious place to go looking for comedy in the 21st, but for Tuck it makes perfect sense.

"It's an era people know so much about because of Dickens and so on," he says. "It means we don't have to do so much legwork setting up a situation or a joke. Once you have a Victorian father and son on stage then you already have a set of preconceptions to work from.

"Pretty much all of what we do is affectionate. A lot of our affection is for the literature of the times but also for the films of the 60s which portrayed the Victorian era. It's not a direct parody but there are certainly lots of little lifts from the Sherlock Holmes films."

There is also a sneaking suspicion that The Penny Dreadfuls have at least some empathy for Victorian sensibilities. Well-spoken young chaps, one of them went to a school so steeped in tradition that shirts with detached collars were still part of the uniform. If asked, none of them are likely to be puzzled by the correct direction in which to pass the port. Tuck can certainly see a lot of positives about the Victorian era.

"It was the last time Britain was positive about itself," he says. "'If someone said they were going to build a bridge to Denmark, someone else would say, 'You go for it!' Nowadays you would get smacked down. You are not allowed to dream."

Much like their beloved Holmes after two ounces of rough shag and a tincture or two of morphine, The Penny Dreadfuls seem to have solved the mystery of how to be critically acclaimed. Their show at last year's Fringe won them fistfuls of four and five-star awards and led to BBC Radio 7 commissioning a four-part series from them. Called The Brothers Faversham, it followed the adventures of four swashbuckling sons of the house of Faversham. It did so well that the Beeb commissioned another series for the autumn.

Regulars on the circuit outwith the Fringe, their live work generally finds appreciative audiences. When they previewed a version of Aeneas Faversham Forever at the Brighton Festival Fringe in May, it won the Best Comedy Show award. It was a proud moment and one that was only slightly marred by the venue's automatic announcing system which started each performance by introducing the group as 'Anus Favours Ham' in a mid-Atlantic twang.

Their TV appearances have been more limited. This is possibly down to the BBC's reluctance to match the Dreadfuls' wide-ranging imagination with the corporation's less expansive budget. One of their sketches, set on top of Big Ben, was broadcast as part of the BBC3 Comedy Shuffle series. Originally, they had submitted two sketches but, when the producers started toting up the costs of producing just the one, they decided that they were in danger of ignoring Mr Micawber's advice about living within their means.

"The Big Ben sketch looked very expensive because it was," beams Tuck. "They told us we could work with this amazing CGI guy and to do just what we wanted. They changed their minds after the first sketch.

"The second was set on a whaling ship and would have had a cast of dozens," he adds wistfully.

Pleasance Courtyard, (0131-556 6550), until August 25, 7.10pm