Clever Peter: The Dreams Factory

• Brian Donaldson
• 28 August 2014

This article is from 2014.

Lukewarm sketches from comedy trio at Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Clever Peter have been tagged as one of the brightest sketch trios to emerge in the past few years but there seems to be no real evidence to back up that claim here. The Dreams Factory is a hotchpotch of bits and bobs and predicated on pretty shaky foundations: are we really still having a go at ad people and their irritating brainstorming ad-speak in 2014? Ironically, this is a show about mad ideas that has very few light bulb moments of its own.

All Clever Peter really have going for them with this show is a relentless energy and the boundless enthusiasm displayed by William Hartley, Edward Eales-White and Richard Bond keeps things ticking over while a devised structure helps the sketches flow neatly into one another. The core of their story is a tough-sell campaign for rat-milk which then leads us into following the adventures of factory-working vermin. But the jokes are simply refusing to pull their weight.

Perhaps the biggest indictment is that their soundtrack is so full of arresting tunes that you can’t help but feel a little bit sad when the music fades and those lukewarm sketches start rolling again.

Pleasance Courtyard, run ended.