Writers: Meat and Two Veg
Director: Martha French
Anybody who’s ever shared a house will recognise the difficulty in finding a replacement housemate, especially if someone has had to depart quickly. The chances of that departure being due to an unexplained “mining accident” are slim, but that sidestep from reality is at the heart of Meat and Two Veg’s slightly surreal sketch comedy hour, Dirty Laundry.
The trio of performers – Cambridge Footlights alumni Robbie Boyd, Maddie London and Emily Symington – claim that their skits are all based loosely on house sharing, but the theme is so loose as to be invisible at times. Perhaps the closest the troupe comes to returning to the theme is a glorious take on the sea shanty trend, with a group of student landlords lauding the various minor infractions that will result in them retaining the full deposit.
The trio often find comedy in transplanting modern millennial attitudes into anachronistic situations – a pair of World War I pen pals who write in modern sexting lingo, or London and Symington as two millennial Suffragettes who think all that marching and chaining to railings is getting to be a bit much (“we can’t all be horse people, Emily!” exclaims one in response to Davison’s idea for a new protest).
Home makeover TV shows and the growing trend for sleep podcasts also fall prey to Meat and Two Veg’s sly takes. There are also some sketches which seem more conventional before a surreal rug pull reveals a punchline out of left field. The most effective of these is an extended folk song sequence, marginally amusing until a killer tag at the end.
One or two of the sketches invoke callbacks to earlier gags, which helps lend a sense of structure to the hour. Whereas some other sketch companies tend to over-rely on such a device, though, Meat and Two Veg are canny enough to know that a repeated gag can pale quickly – nothing comes back for a third bite at the cherry, providing more space for original quickfire comedy.
At the end of the hour, the three performers making up Meat and Two Veg announce that this is, perhaps, their final time on stage together after performing at the Edinburgh Fringe and this two-night run at the Hen and Chickens. That would be a shame, for the sketch comedy world is brighter with their presence in it.
Reviewed on 17 October 2022
