I LEAR

"The funniest thesp-fest since Nigel Planer, sustained as much by the fizz of its clowning as by the sharpness of its satire. Its broad, contagious sense of fun is sustained by a respect for the audience’s intelligence. I, Lear offers enough belly laughs to send you out happily into the night" - Dominic Maxwell, The Times

”The funniest thing I have seen in a theatre in my life. A fantastically original performance, with exceptional execution. A highly recommended show. Pure comic genius” - BBC

“Bloody funny, with shades of Mitchell & Webb as well as Spike Milligan in the best tradition of the celebration of eccentricity” – The Stage

"You’re laughing so hard you’re gasping for air. Jones and Murtagh, hugely talented performers, also wrote the show, and they wring every comedic drop they can from their subject matter. I doubt there’s a funnier hour to be spent in the West End." - City AM

"It’s silly, it’s cheeky, it’s enormously likeable, and underscoring it all is a solid bed of satire." - What's On Stage

"Irresistibly hilarious, rush to get tickets" - Time Out

"The hilarity is infectious, overflows from stage to stalls, and gives the audience a real comic buzz." - MusicOMH.com

“All in the theatre knew they were in the presence of giants. Miss I, Lear at your peril – it is the stuff of genius”
WINNER: BEST COMEDY SHOW BUXTON FRINGE 2007

“Fast paced, totally original, this side-splitting slapstick performance is not to be missed” – editor Art’icle Magazine, Bedford

PROFESSOR BUMM’S STORY MACHINE

“Full of clever word play, silly jokes, and mad improvisations; Andrew Jones and Ciaran Murtagh work so hard and play the audience so skilfully that you soon find yourself grinning as inanely as the kids” - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

“The children dissolved into giggles, the parents shone, I laughed for the first time in three days. They produce children’s theatre that defies gravity” – The Times

“Hilarious masters of improvisation” – Pick of the Day, Daily Mail

“The affable hilarity is intensified by the knowledge that they are only holding it together by the skin of their teeth. They have a keen eye for material that can make young audiences roll about” – The Scotsman

THE JOY OF WINE

“They’ll make you laugh buckets, as Shiraz the nose on your face” – Pick of the Day, Daily Mail

“Unsurpassed levels of lunacy!” – Metro

“A remarkably entertaining show – a triumph for The Black Sheep!” - Chortle

“These guys really know their wine” – Wine International

FAIRLY TALES

“Refreshing, unpretentious theatre that celebrates its raw ingredients and reinvigorates the link between teller and listener. Warmly recommended” - Time Out Critic’s Choice

“A boundless frolic that seeks out and follows hilarious stories wherever they may lead, breathtakingly and spontaneously shaped from a suitcase of props, audience suggestions and the wonderful inventiveness of these two energetic performers” WINNER: BEST FAMILY SHOW BUXTON FRINGE 2007

”The stories are intriguing and funny, and parents are kept as amused as their children. Their daft inventiveness made all the children snort with laughter” - The Scotsman

SKETCH SHOWS

“Great comic writing combined with astounding performances” – The Guardian

“Endlessly inventive and brilliantly funny, bristling with energy and risky invention” – The Scotsman

“The cream of chortle-worthy talent, very funny” - Loaded

“Fast-paced sketches and creative experimentation; a joy to behold” – The List

"Good solid comedy, well-written, well-performed, well-thought out and bloody funny.They know how comedy works. They know how to pace, how to feed and how to deliver the punch line." - The Stage

It’s well-written, well-performed and well-thought out. It’s not particularly ground-breaking. It isn’t going to start a new comedy movement, but it is bloody funny.

What Murtagh and Jones understand is the dynamics of a sketch and they understand it well. Sketch shows can descend into cliche and laziness. The Black Sheep, as they are collectively known, generally avoid that. Buying Hitler on eBay, the Ticketbastard ticketing service, the upstaging dancing bear, and the domestic blues singer are all top-draw sketches, as is the Dickens sketch, which is worthy of anything Fry and Laurie wrote.

Both are good performers. Murtagh in particular has a relish for comedy. But their real strength lies in their writing. They know how comedy works. They know how to pace, how to feed and how to deliver the punch line.

Television and radio is crying out for good solid comedy writers. This pair firmly fit the bill, and they certainly have the potential to make their way from back room boys to Radio 4 regulars.

The audience were cast as a group of distinguished scientists who had come to see the launch of this scientific breakthrough. Of course our two hapless scientists managed to break this wonderful contraption immediately (by mistaking a vital piece of equipment for a coffee cup holder). The pair then have to pretend it is still working by doing all the stories themselves with the aid some weird looking props.

They enlist the help of the audience to suggest keywords, such as what did you have for lunch? name a location, and so on, which they then fashioned into stories and brought to life.

Andrew Jones and Ciaran Murtagh throw themselves into the action of these tales wholeheartedly. They certainly have to think quickly as the audience gave them some very unpredictable suggestions to work into the plots.

It could be described as an improvisational story telling show but that would not do justice to the crazy antics that abound during the hour long piece. It is very, very funny. One of the great things about it is that way they involve the audience. The kids loved having the power to dictate the direction the stories were going.

The actual story machine itself was an impressive bright red Heath-Robinson kind of monolith, which was funny just to look at.

Indeed, it symbolised the whole madcap and hilarious show – a very well put together, cleverly structured anarchy.

But I, Lear (coincidence, or homage?) is sustained as much by the fizz of its clowning as by the sharpness of its satire. Andrew Jones and Ciaran Murtagh play overwrought old-timer Hugh Carpenter and cavalier smoothie Chester Bleinheim, two rep throwbacks who are here to masterclass us in the ways of the stage. Murtagh upstages Jones as they goon around in Greek masks and he drags up to play a Williams heroine; Jones scores a hit with his Bennett drone – with its spot-on talk of “Warburtons barn cakes” – and they both merrily debase themselves for the Cats routine and a King Lear finale that brilliantly reincorporates their earlier sketches.

The director and co-writer Cal McCrystal, the comedy world’s Mr Fixit for this kind of graduate tomfoolery, ensures that there’s tight thinking behind the apparent free-for-all. Its broad, contagious sense of fun is sustained by a respect for the audience’s intelligence. So while I, Lear has nothing huge to say about its subject-matter, it also offers enough belly laughs to send you out happily into the night.

That’s just one moment from I, Lear, a show in which a pair of young actors (Murtagh and Andrew Jones) play a pair of older actors giving a spoof masterclass in the theatrical arts via a series of pastiches of various stalwarts for the dramatic canon. That may seem a rather hackneyed idea, but who cares when you’re laughing so hard you’re gasping for air? There’s a terrifically dry lampooning of Somerset Maugham, an uproarious version of Greek tragedy, a take on Noel Coward in which all the words simply fuse together into upper-class nonsense babble – followed by a song, of course – and a parody of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads that’s fiendishly accurate.

Sherlock Holmes, Berthold Brecht, Eric Morecambe, Tennessee Williams and an unforgettable rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song from Cats, Memory, are all thrown into the mix, culminating in a hilarious romp through King Lear itself.

Jones and Murtagh, hugely talented performers, also wrote the show, and they wring every comedic drop they can from their subject matter. I doubt there’s a funnier hour to be spent in the West End.