Preview of The Awkward Silence, Headington Theatre (From The Oxford Times)

Preview of The Awkward Silence, Headington Theatre

2:44pm Wednesday 28th July 2010 in

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Oxford, and Britain as a whole, has a tradition of exporting the finest sketch comedians. We’re responsible for Monty Python, Not the Nine O’Clock News and countless other celebrated collectives, though there’s been a dearth recently. Little Britain’s success has fizzled out, Mitchell and Webb’s BBC2 has never lived up to its potential and Katy Brand is, well, just not very good.

Hoping to change all this are a local sketch collective, led by principal writer Ralph Jones. Alongside him in the Awkward Silence are Dan License and Thom Short, and although they have been together only since May, Jones and Short have been collaborating for six years, and have become, according to Jones, “a big throbbing sack of undiluted comedy” or “a young and prolific group who perform a mixture of surreal and observational sketches.”

So what do the Awkward Silence do? Jones says: “There isn't really a theme to the sketches, just a style. Sketch-shows are wonderfully loose in that sense; they are very much a series of incredibly different situations and atmospheres.”

Themed or not, sketch comedy has been a hit and miss genre, something Jones is extremely forthcoming about. He’s scathing about current sketch shows and when asked what is missing from them, he has a simple answer. “A lot. There’s some horrendous sketch comedy on television, and the genre subsequently gets a bad rap because this is all the majority of the public sees of it. Little Britain, Mitchell and Webb and The Catherine Tate Show rely so shamelessly on catchphrases and predictable recurring scenarios that all excitement and spontaneity is lobotomised. It’s a long time since a genuinely great sketch-show has been on TV. The best TV comedy at the moment seems to be coming from sitcoms, shows like The Thick of It and Peep Show and from animation like Family Guy. It’s great for us, though, as it means there may be a gap in the market.”

Jones says: “I'd like to think we create different scenarios from other acts — worlds that people may not have thought about before, where strange people exist and where strange things happen. We float between the real and the surreal and specialise at inhabiting lots of different characters in one show. I think it’s fair to say we play ‘ourselves’ less than other sketch groups, and that in that sense it’s a lot less like stand-up, and more like a distorted form of theatre.”

So what can people who come to see then expect? “Plenty of big laughs. The show incorporates stage material but also video sketches projected on to a screen and shorter audio sketches, in order to fill every available moment with comedy. So much comedy that people are on the floor, crying out for us to stop. People can also expect to get a nice load of surreal comedy — sketches about people competing to throw naan bread as far as they can, and a horror film trailer that involves a man terrorising his victims by drenching them in yoghurt.”

Well, it certainly sounds worth seeing and, if it works, what kind of future does Jones hope the Awkward Silence have? “I certainly see us touring” he says. “This year we’re doing the Camden Fringe, the Nottingham Comedy Festival. In the future I would love us to continue getting the buzz from live theatre work — definitely. Television exposure is very important for comedy groups and can do wonders for their reputation so I’d certainly be interested in that.”

The Awkward Silence play The Theatre at Headington on Saturday. For tickets (£7.50) call 07922882046 or email theawkwardsilence@hotmail.co.uk