Whether you realise it or not, you have met The Black Sheep before, although you were probably unaware of it. Perhaps it was at the parish fayre or jumble sale, or maybe it was at the last coffee morning or book group. It’s not you fault, they look like ordinary people who live ordinary people lives, that’s what everyone thought - until they started digging up the bodies…
The Black Sheep are a quick fire sketch troupe with an unsavoury preoccupation with the darker side of the human psyche. Their macabre vignettes inhabit a world that will be all too familiar too much of the festival audience: The lazy pastures of Middle Britain; of Pimms, people carriers and manicured lawns. This would be a landscape only noteworthy in its banality if it wasn’t for The Black Sheep who explore the paranoia and neurosis of these pathologically domesticated communities with a collection of wonderfully rendered caricatures, each one with their own unsettling secret.
Since Luxury Assortment is sort of a ‘best of’ collection, the darker sketches have been balanced with some of the lighter material from their Ubersausage days. While these sketches parody many of the same pop-culture figures as everyone else - Jesus, Santa, Hitler – they are done with a singular style that never fails to delight. Particularly enjoyable is Anne Frank: The Musical a scandalous yet well-observed skit that is worthy successor to Mel Brookes’ Spring Time For Hitler.
Despite their love of the macabre, there is something quiet comfortable about The Black Sheep. They belong to the same murky gene pool as The League of Gentlemen and the Pythons, though they never quite reach the excesses of the former or the absurdity of the latter. They strike their own special balance with Luxury Assortment, and only allow us the smallest glimpse of what might lie beneath - just when you think you are on the verge of witnessing the full horrors of what has been implied, The Black Sheep recoil and the peaceful idyll of Middle Britain is restored.
4/5
Simon Patrick Biggs
