Fig – Hen & Chickens Theatre, London

Writer: Kate McCloud

Director: James Aldred

Alternative sketch comedy is a bit of a no man’s land these days so it’s exciting to see new writers like Kate McCloud explore innovative forms of comedy in the testing ground of pub theatre with her new show Fig playing at the Hen & Chickens in Highbury for four nights. A collection of over 20 separate stories across 70 minutes of performance, McCloud describes this as an ‘experimental work’, and while the completeness of the storytelling is still developing, there is a promising sophistication in the writing that offers much for the audience to engage with.

Fig is particularly interested in scenarios that are ordinary and surreal at the same time, so many of the characters and situations that McCloud creates are either people taking a very domestic approach to a bizarre situation or, conversely, behaving excessively in perfectly normal places. An early sequence involves a couple hiding from their guests at a dinner party, alarmed that they are saying the wrong things and drawing attention to themselves. Their hysteria grows in an amusingly disproportionate way to the domestic mundanity of their dilemma, and while this particular sketch doesn’t reach a satisfying non-conclusion, there is an enjoyable characterisation in the way McCloud captures their overblown concern.

Later in the show, a couple argue over the price of a sandwich only to resolve it with a mystery gift of light in a box the audience cannot see, while a family captures and kills some kind of unknown predator creating a Lord of the Flies fight for dominance, the normality of the romantic and sibling relationships nicely counterbalancing the peculiarity of the set-ups. Often McCloud mixes different genres together to create unnerving or distorted concepts, taking standard tropes like family gatherings or office workers and adding science fiction twists that are not yet complete ideas but the concept and delivery are well considered.

Some of the best pieces of Fig are the recurring scenes, showing the audience the same sketch but from an alternative perspective, meshing different characters together to create new scenes. Two God-like entities represented as two people in a single body wanting to befriend playing children evolves into a Spanish language version and later two ghosts, complete with white sheets and painted-on eyes, who wander in from another story. A small piece about a family looking at their dead mother’s letters initially takes a sci-fi direction with one of those mysterious light boxes but later is replayed with a different kind of ending, changing its impact from unnerving to a friendlier tone. This idea of recasting something the audience has already seen is the essence of the sketch show, creating anchor points throughout and, here, proves some of the strongest material.

Performed by actors including Alex Westbrook, Stella Wells, Gabriel Murphy and Laura de Marchis, Fig needs perhaps fewer sketches in order to work through the ideas in more depth as well as establishing a greater connection or theme across the show, but McCloud is a promising writer of absurdist and surrealist comedy, finding plenty of strange inspiration in the everyday.

Runs until 31 January 2025