In their fast-paced show, the three team members throw up stand-up comedy, comedy sketches and comedy songs, all held together with sound effects, costumes and a dizzying range of characters including John McCain, Mary Magdalene, a vaguely Scottish Obama and an unapologetically Scottish Jesus.
The show embraces the comedy behind such politically correct topics as racism and religion, and while the themes may run close to the bone at times, they never overstep into ’shock tactics’. This is a show which takes delicate, topical issues and turns them into quality comedy material, making the audience laugh hard on subjects they would expect to feel guilty about doing so.
This is clever, adult humour with a number of scenes, songs and segments that contain moments of near-genius festival comedy. Each of these devices would struggle to carry a show on its own and the blend between the three offers the variety and depth to make this a very successful comedy show.
Topical Scurvy, however, is not a polished performance, with some timing and technical glitches needing ironed out, although these do not detract too much to cause serious problems to the show’s success. The material and its delivery are strong enough and certainly funny enough to carry them through such problems.
Topical Scurvy also has the additional attraction of being FREE comedy – a rare festival gem. Although definitely “best not to bring the kids” as the flier says, this is a show certainly worth trying to catch during their short Festival run.
4/5 
Nik Breslin
