After winning Perrier’s “Best Newcomer” last year, Noble & Silver are almost guaranteed sell-out audiences this year, but is there any substance beyond the hype?
On the face of it, the answer is clearly no. This year’s show seems to be a series of half formulated sketches that don’t go anywhere and only lead the audience into sporadic bursts of nervous laughter. This is not good. Hitchcock once said, “A confused audience is an audience who is not emoting.” and nothing could be truer of this crowd.
However, if you take a step back from the immediate madness, Noble & Silver have managed to break one of live performance’s biggest barriers through the delineation of their act. By slowly piecing the snippets of their act together into the correct timeframe it is clear to see that they are geniuses, but this will probably be lost on most people until the next morning.
Unfortunately, most people go to see comedy for enjoyment in the present tense, so the duo’s act is stripped down into seemingly bizarre acts of complete randomness coupled with Noble & Silver’s unique blend of video/live action trickery. Quite frankly this isn’t enough for most people.
Noble & Silver still show a lot of promise, but are far too smart for their own good. You cannot fault them on their attempts to try something new, but they are ultimately before their time. If they’re not careful, their genius is going to be wasted and the names of Noble & Silver will not exist outside the minds of a few hardcore fans.
3/5
Richard Biggs
