Review: Knickerbocker Glory at the Unity Theatre ****

When you call yourself Choc-a-block Comedy, it inevitably creates a certain level of expectation.

But Trading Standards can stand down, because Laura Robinson and Aidan Rivers’ droll double act happily lives up to its name in this chock-a-block comedy confection whipped up and staged as part of the Unity Theatre’s Up Next Festival.

In Knickerbocker Glory, the recent LIPA acting graduates (Robinson appeared at the Unity several times during training, while you might recognise Rivers from ITV espionage thriller Betrayal) embody a series of keenly observed characters – and some caricatures – emmeshed in their own mini melodramas where the mundane and the farcical often collide.

There’s a meta outer to the concept, a show where the audience is...the audience and the first characters we're introduced to are a pair of front-of-house theatre staff holding signs that remind us what is verboten, including ‘no arson’ and ‘no Lynx Africa in the auditorium’. Hear hear!

Disillusionment, disappointment, displacement and delusion are among the base notes beneath the comedy as the pair take on a range of roles, some of which turn out to be recurring characters among the varied layers of this Knickerbocker Glory.

One of these is Rivers’ painfully brilliant ‘street’ spoken word artist Ray-Kay 47, he of a swaggering, studied diffidence in hoodie and trackie bums (ironically, the actor actually names spoken word as a skill on his Spotlight page).

“I usually do car parks because the acoustics is better,” Ray-Kay announces before launching into the first of several enjoyably atrocious performance poems.

Robinson matches him with her artful turn as Psychic Kitty, a celebrity medium whose resemblance to anyone living or dead is, I’m sure, purely coincidental.

Elsewhere they are great as supermarket workers Morgan and Ash, delivering sly deadpan dialogue à la Victoria Wood (Robinson’s Morgan also has dreams of conquering BGT that don’t quite match her actual ability), and mismatched couple Craig and Keisha – him an indolent couch potato with a Richard Beckinsale/Lenny Godber vocal delivery and her a seething ball of fury and resentment.

They also make a fair stab at a pair of trustafarian siblings, although while the scene starts strongly it loses momentum and some of its comedic sharpness as it progresses.

You certainly get your money’s worth with Robinson and Rivers packing a lot in to one sketch show, and there’s an argument for tightening it up around its rangy edges to bring it back closer towards the 60-minute mark.

But all in all, Knickerbocker Glory is impressively conceived and is delivered with wit and panache.