Beard

• Brian Donaldson
• 11 August 2012

This article is from 2012.

Promising debut from ‘young upstarts’ Rosa Robson and Matilda Wnek

Cambridge just keeps on churning the comedy talent out. Rosa Robson is a Pembroke Player (former participants include messrs Idle, Oddie and Cook) while Matilda Wnek is a Footlights ‘general member’. Together they are Beard, a fuzzy, comforting, occasionally scratchy duo who are adept actors with a happy knack for avoiding the kind of clichéd set-ups that many of their contemporaries on the Fringe are prone to.

With little in the way of props and nothing in the way of costumes to fling on in-between scenes, they merely rely on strong writing and a comic physicality which both wield to excellent effect. The opening scene of a wander up some baronial stairs glancing at a series of painfully posh family portraits (Robson pulls some extraordinary faces here) is inspired as is the end routine which takes place in opposite flats as a robbery unfolds: here, Wnek pulls off the best grandfather clock impersonation you’ll ever see. And if there’s a better dubbed Spanish soap opera scene this August, get me there now. A very promising start.

Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 27 Aug, 4pm, £8--£10 (£7--£9).