A Standup careers can be long-lasting – but the lifespan of most sketch groups is short-lived, often over before they’ve really got going. This is all the more true given that there are few opportunities for the art form beyond the fringe stage. Sheep have felt as though they’ve been pulling the veil since they first burst out from behind it 15 festivals ago. This year’s offering, The Giggle Bunch (That’s Our Name for You), will be their last, they keep telling us – a little more than is necessary, in my opinion. Maybe that’s just because I regret it. At their best, which The Giggle Bunch sometimes come close to (see a post-apocalyptic scene featuring an unlikely cameo from David Brent), there is no more thrilling, mind-expanding act in comedy.
This first show in six years is, they say, pieced together from the scraps of several abandoned sets: one about their fathers, one about the culture wars. Sheep-watchers will know not to take a word they say seriously—but perhaps that origin story is true, and explains the lack of connective tissue here, since every frame beyond that is their swan song. Perhaps that’s a factor in one or two sketches feeling more obscure than usual, as if a plot always aimed at twisting sketches into elusive, unconventional shapes has abstracted them beyond the need for punchlines or meaning. As Liam Williams says here of a sketch supposedly generated by AI, “the true meaning remains a mystery.”
But more often they deliver fantastically rich routines full of wild juxtapositions and unexpected sketch ideas. The opening scene, featuring Daran Johnson as a savvy dad, lingers a little longer after the punchline to see what happens to the supporting characters. Later sketches combine two Damon Runyon-esque noo-yoik dice games (for no apparent reason) with a Yorkshireman selling dog names, and feature Keir Starmer (in Al Roberts’s droll impersonation) mediating between a psychotic clown and his terrified victim.
Not for the first time, there’s a musical number that combines half-hearted showbiz pizazz, over-the-top content and Williams’s unsound voice to a hilarious result. If this is the end, Sheeps leave us on a high, if not their peak.
