Describing themselves as “two-thirds Yorkshire-bred, one-third jealous”, sketch comedy trio Pat Rascal, consisting of Anisa Khorassani, Matt Blin, and Rob Davidson, are in town with a ridiculous yarn, and a taste for truly absurd comedy.
The idea is simple. Yorkshire lad, named ‘Yorkshire’, gets the bug for space. Why? Well, because Yorkshire came 12th at the 2012 Olympics, and if they can do that, then surely they can also win the race to Mars.
You can hardly blame Yorkshire, given the ‘media-storm’ which surrounded those Halcyon pre-Brexit days, and Pat Rascal makes sure to remind us by lip-syncing to a montage of recorded media hyperbole of the time. It’s a riot of an opening – where most lip-sync falls flat, they go hell for leather. The competitive grape routine is just the pièce de résistance.
“Describing themselves as “two-thirds Yorkshire-bred, one-third jealous”, sketch comedy trio Pat Rascal, consisting of Anisa Khorassani, Matt Blin, and Rob Davidson, are in town with a ridiculous yarn, and a taste for truly absurd comedy.“
From there, the trio multi-roles through a barmy adventure which delights in the power of friendship, and of believing in your dreams. Accordingly, we meet Yorkshire (Khorassani) and their two best childhood friends, Yorgos (Blin) and Jon (Davidson), close and thieves, prone to a 3-way ‘Friendship Kiss’ and hilarious games such as ‘Jon’s Possessed’.
The rule of Space Gravy is you can never quite expect where Space Gravy is going at any time, not in terms of the plot, and certainly not in terms of how they will use sticky tape and their unfettered imaginations.
It’s hard to capture the bottled chaos they release upon the audience. Greek people, apparently, all mature into slowly spoken life enthusiasts with immense testicles (within their bulging trousers). Jon, once grown, is so inspired by his work colleagues’ pet snaps that he keeps acquiring his own, with deadly outcomes. Bystanders are traumatised, visiting nephews find out they may not be the only gay in the horio.
Meanwhile, a really terrible spy working for the USA is out to scupper all regional space programmes to make sure that no one else gets to the red planet first. This character may be the weakest part of the show, his caricature a little obvious – but with the Donald in office, maybe all parodies of US official bodies are doomed to appear somewhat tame.
It’s a small point, because aside from their endless supply of insane ideas, the Pat Rascal trio are each excellent comedians, with great timing, and fabulous physicality. Their expressions are often the funniest thing on stage. One also hopes that Sellotape will see the show and sposor it, in recognition of their abundant sticky tape use.
Also, for all the talk of immense testicles earlier, Space Gravy is a wonderfully innocent hour of fun. Aged Feta will be eaten reluctantly, groins will be stretched egregiously, cardboard will be used literally, but above all it’s three friends doing a show about just how great friendship is. Yes, they could possibly have ‘nothing’ to ‘what else?’ when they were workshopping the piece, but perhaps this ‘can do, will do’ attitude is part of the charm.
Well, that charm certainly worked on me, and if you laugh 2/3 as much as I did throughout Pat Rascal’s ‘Space Gravy,’ you’ll still consider it a ticket well worth the purchase price.
Show details
Venue: Venue 61: Underbelly, Cowgate, 66 Cowgate, EH1 1JX (Google Maps)
Date(s): Thu 31 Jul to Sun 24 Aug (24 shows)
Time(s): 9:40pm (60 mins)
Age recommendation: 14+
Price: From £8.5 (concessions available)
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