Review: Potted Pirates
Can you catching lightning in a bottle twice? I think you can. Dan and Jeff, the brains behind Potted Potter (All seven Harry Potter books in about an hour) turn their attention to the world of piracy, and their look at the greatest pirates in history.
Accomplished chidlren’s entertainers, they follow the time honoured double-act route of a lanky silly one with the best ideas, and the short one with hairy legs who runs all the clever bits. Of course they’re going to get in each other’s way, egged on by the audience, and everyone knows where this is going to end up (want a hint? It’s a big song and dance number at the end). Polished, funny, and subtly educational as well, there’s little wrong with this.
The one caveat hanging over Dan and Jeff’s latest show… their other show. Potted Potter can rely on the audience to be fully engaged with the source material, making the humour that much more easily targetted. With Potted Pirates, there’s a tendancy to rely on Disney’s Pirates of the Carribbean films… all well and good till you realise that those films are rated 12 in the UK, and thus the foundations of the show are slightly shakey.
But that seemed to matter very little to the audience pretending to be the Armada sinking the Spanish Galleons, shouting ‘Yaar!!!’ as loudly as possible, and creating the noise of seagulls on cue. Dan and Jeff know how to work a young (and young at heart) crowd. This show is a great first step away from the shadow of Harry Potter, and long may their adventures continue.
Potted Pirates
Pleasance Courtyard
* * * * (4/5)
