My girlfriend has two things in life that she truly adores (I am neither of those two things) the first is comedy, the second is sci-fi. In a world where attractive women are being called out online for wearing nerd specs and a mine craft t-shirt I actually live with the real deal – she can literally quote the whole of Spaceballs whilst belly laughing at almost everything Dark Helmet does. So when she saw a show that she thought might be the Spaceballs for Blade Runner we had tickets faster than I could say “washed away like teardrops in the rain”.

I have seen theatre comedy shows on numerous occasions at the fringe and will generally shy away wherever possible (Sock Puppet Theatre was a particular low point) so as much as I was happy to go along, my expectations were not high.

I was expecting to be sat in a small pub style venue with about four other people cringing whilst a bunch of am-dram rejects try too hard to make something factious seem deep…. I could not have been more wrong.

The Police Cops bought an infectious energy to the stage that I haven’t seen since the early days of Pappy’s Fun Club. They spend so much time either on a dance break or trying to make each other corpse that you almost forget that there is a play going on! And there is a play, with quite an involved plot going on – There are Australian evil genius killer robots, over-keen space cadets, dead mentors and the best damn police cop in space – but the reality is that you just need to treat this show like a roller-coaster, sit back and enjoy the chaos.

They had filled a large venue on a week night with minimal publicity or flyering which means that people had bought tickets on reputation and word of mouth, both of which these guys richly deserved.

If I had more time I would have loved to have caught their other show but rest assured that this a clown troupe that I will be keeping an eye on and honestly cannot wait to see what they get up to next. Fantastic entertainment.

Clown Stars: * * * * *

@Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh

If you liked this you might also enjoy…