Leads & Stern

• Brian Donaldson
• 21 August 2012

This article is from 2012.

Patchy sketch debut with some lovely touches

Imagine the terror of being in a comedy threesome when one of your party dies just hours before the Fringe kicks off, leaving the surviving duo to either pack it in or somehow soldier on? This is the central made-up dilemma at the heart of the sketch debut from Leads (Gemma Leader) & Stern (Juliette Stern) and is arguably the funniest thing about their show.

The twist/joke here is that these two nice white girls are still mourning the loss of tough black rapper Devondre (given that he’s not real, you’ll see a different spelling of his name everywhere). This is a sketch show remember and needless to say, some bits work much better than others. The bank robbery, Dickens punning and the doctor telling a patient about their ‘results’ all work better than the granny Olympics, horse-mask, and hen-night in a war-zone routines.

With a reasonable bulk of this hour, the pair have served Devondre’s memory well. In others, you can just about hear him spinning in his fictional grave behind those bins on Princes Street.

Underbelly, Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, until 26 Aug, 5pm, £9--£10 (£8--£9).