Armageddon Outta Here ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Jack Stevens
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
“An asteroid hurtles toward Earth, threatening total annihilation. Meanwhile ego, denial, faith and petty squabbles ripple through a world teetering on the edge. Dark, loud and gloriously anarchic, Armageddon Outta Here is the apocalypse we deserve.”
Chris Roberts' direction is brilliant. It knows exactly what it wants to achieve and does it in a brilliantly clear way. The staging has real confidence, letting the sketches move quickly without ever feeling like the production is desperately trying to keep up with itself. It is chaotic, but very deliberately chaotic, which is quite a skill when your subject is the end of civilisation.
The set and costume design are wonderfully inventive. The production makes brilliant use of different hanging signs at the back of the stage to convey where we are, provide visual jokes, or, quite often, do both at once. It is a simple idea that gets an enormous amount of mileage. And then there are the costumes. There are so many of them, and they are used brilliantly for comic effect. Whenever a performer fully commits to a joke and goes all in with the costume, it makes the gag even funnier. There is something particularly pleasing about watching a performer disappear backstage and return looking increasingly ridiculous.
The lighting and sound design are really nice. I particularly liked the blue lighting used between the sketch transitions, which gave the show a consistent visual tempo and helped separate the different sections without slowing things down. The sound was also wonderfully balanced, allowing everything to be heard distinctly without becoming overwhelming. In a comedy this fast-paced, that balance is essential.
The book by Tom Johnson and Chris Roberts is just so clever, funny and witty. Some people may say it gets close to the mark, and they would probably be right, but it never feels like it is overstepping. Instead, it is very much a good old-fashioned comedy that understands exactly what kind of laughs it wants. I particularly enjoyed the older style comedy and the physical violence. There is something wonderfully old-school about some of the humour, with a definite Bottom-esque quality to the physical comedy. It is stupid in exactly the right way.
Tom Johnson and Rob Glenister are so enjoyable to watch. The pair clearly love performing together and bounce off each other brilliantly. There is a wonderful sense that they are not simply trying to deliver the show, but are actively attempting to make each other corpse. During the performance I saw, there was a series of “your mum” jokes, made even funnier by the fact that the other performer’s actual mother was sitting in the audience. He started saying her actual name in an attempt to make him crack, which resulted in exactly the kind of glorious, unpredictable moment that makes live comedy so much fun. That chemistry is one of the show’s greatest strengths. They are clearly comfortable enough with one another to push the jokes further, react to whatever happens in the room and occasionally try to derail each other. It gives the whole thing a wonderfully anarchic energy without ever feeling out of control.
Armageddon Outta Here is exactly the sort of show that feels at home at the Edinburgh Fringe. It is loud, silly, anarchic and completely unafraid to accept its own ridiculousness. It is not trying to reinvent comedy. It does something much more enjoyable: it takes a ridiculous premise, fills it with ridiculous characters, and then lets two performers have an absolute ball with it.
Armageddon Outta Here is playing at Just The Tonic at Westside Rodeo, The Saloon Bar, at 12 pm, with performances running until 17 August. The show runs for approximately 60 minutes. Fancy watching civilisation fall apart from the safety of a comedy venue?
Comments