A fab four star review for Eurovision Sock Contest from Edfringe Review. Not bad.
From ‘Sexy Blonde’ to ‘Deep Sea Diva’, the pun-filled spectacle that is the Scottish Falsetto Socks’ latest performance has enough hilarity to—well, blow your socks off. The well-deserved winners of Edinburgh Festival Insider Comedy Award (2019) return to the Fringe this year with a Eurovision extravaganza, featuring sock-puppet singers from countries around the world.
The performance begins from the first moment you enter the venue, and are confronted by the sight of a wobbly puppet show stand and the piercing sound of punny puppet-themed song covers. Not something to raise your hopes, exactly. What becomes clear as soon as the actual performance begins is that this show is not just painfully cheesy: it’s painfully cheesy and able to make fun of itself, which makes the bordering on obsessive pun jokes totally worth it. With the shadow of the puppet-master bobbing cheerfully against the back wall, we witness two ‘hosts’ (one kilted and one suited) taking us through the stages of the Eurovision Sock Contest final. The sock puppets themselves – bobbly, ragged, and suitably dishevelled, complete the show’s beautifully non-professional image.
After a delightfully sung first song with the refrain ‘I’m a Sooccck’, the hosts begin to introduce the acts for the night. The first scenes hold onto a sense of relative normality (emphasis on relative), with France, Scandinavia, and Germany performing their songs. It’s not long, however, before ‘Soblovakia’ and ‘The Austro-Hungarian Empire’ take to the stage. The show finally comes into its own, bouncing from relatable comedy to pure absurdity. As well as ‘Sexy Blonde’ and ‘Deep Sea Diva’, the audience meets ‘Deconstructionist Collective’ and ‘Johnny Foreigner’, each representing their country(ies) on-stage. The show culminates with Britain’s ‘Brotherhood of Man’ performance, and a final audience vote, as measured on the 'GrahamNorton-ometer'.
The Falsetto Socks were fun-filled and undoubtedly hilarious, but perhaps recognise their own central fault, momentarily acknowledging ‘the law of diminishing returns’. By three-quarters of the way through the show, the punny comedy had begun to wane, as echoed by the audience’s quietening applause. Though the performance came back to life towards the end, its weak spot was, perhaps, its excessively repetitive slapstick comedy.
That being said, the Scottish Falsetto Sock’s 12th new show is well worth a watch. Unafraid to play with the audience, the comedy was beautifully up-beat, energetic, and absurd, and most definitely made for a 55 minutes well-spent.
SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCKS: EUROVISION SOCK CONTEST
Aug 3 - 13 - Gilded Balloon Billiard Room 4.30pm
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