Tall Tales From The Riverbanks, Canal Café Theatre - review

A wonderfully eclectic start to a voyage of comic discovery, to Edinburgh, by narrowboat
Cardinal Burns.
Lucy Young / Evening Standard
3 May 2016

It’s not Michael Palin venturing from Pole to Pole but maybe the modern stand-up equivalent. Yesterday afternoon, as part of the London 2012 Festival, a group of landlubber comedians set off from King’s Cross to travel to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by narrowboat, along the way pausing for pop-up gigs. Having successfully reached Little Venice they launched with their first show, ending up soaked, due to sweat rather than falling overboard.

The floating cast varies but this was an impressive debut. MC Tim Fitzhigham is well-qualifed, having once crossed the Channel in a bathtub. He whipped the audience into a froth with some well-chosen banter, including the explanation that the distinctive palm-backwards naval salute originates because Queen Victoria once complained about seeing dirty palms.

A busy bill began with in-house troupe NewsRevue mugging furiously through a succession of signposted gags about the Olympics and Wimbledon. More original material came from sketch combo Idiots of Ants and storyteller John Kearns. The latter barked out a shaggy dog saga involving him licking the iceberg that struck the Titanic, the night’s nearest thing to a titular tall tale.

The best was Cardinal Burns, fresh from their well-received E4 sketch show. Seb Cardinal — a young Sting, or Bobby Davro if one feels harsh — and the tousle-haired Dustin Demri-Burns have an engagingly skewed sensibility, exemplified by their mini-cab office duologue concerning an unusually informal meeting with the Queen: “I said ‘I wouldn’t like to have your heating bill’.”

The shadow of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore loomed large over this talented duo but they still exuded a beautifully offbeat edge. Character comedian Cariad Lloyd was also excellent with her annoyingly kooky creation, Joey Bechamel, no relation surely of Zooey Deschanel.

Further sideways wit was provided by stardom-bound Pat Cahill, whose oddball outlook is Eddie Izzard-ish yet also unique. Australian Sam Simmons closed proceedings with some hyperactive riffing which bemused and amused in equal measure.

This was a wonderfully eclectic start to an epic voyage. Comedy is often described as sink or swim. Never has that felt truer.

Follow the journey at pleasanceahoy.com.

For the latest shows and events visit our Going Out pages.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in