Upon arriving at the ADC Theatre on Thursday night, I was confronted by the black, undressed cavern of the stage, accompanied by some resolutely jaunty music, and from this first uncomfortable contrast, Broody shone brightest when it got darkest. The ubiquitous red flyers assured us that we would be ‘sitting uncomfortably’, and it was the most unsettling and bizarre moments which consistently got big laughs.

It was a shaky start. The first few sketches suffered an initial lack of energy - and occasionally volume - but this was gradually resolved as the cast and script seemed to come into their own.  As with most shows, a few sketches were longer than necessary, spending too long developing conceits which were clever but not brilliantly funny.  More than compensating for occasional dips in verbal pace, however, we were treated to some stellar physical comedy, executed with remarkable control and confidence, and the various sketches revolving around mime and dance, particularly ‘The Ballet of the Black Fly’ were some of the highlights of the show.

Writer Ryan O’Sullivan really succeeded when he departed from carefully structured concept sketches and descended into what I will term as the show’s ‘horrific whimsy.’  This was demonstrated when the quirkiness of O’Sullivan’s writing was married with the ‘dark and moody’ overtones which the flyer so eagerly advertised, and what a gloriously disgusting wedding it was.  A prime example of this was the ‘your wife is made of maggots’ sketch, whose weirdness was compounded at its denouement, when Pierre Novellie’s disembodied voice announced that it was time for the audience to choose the ending for the sketch.

Like the break in the show provided for coughing, this self-consciously ‘unsettling’ audience address was both uncomfortable and strangely compelling. Although it was slow to start, another sketch which exemplified the wonderful weirdness of Broody featured Matilda Wnek and Theo Chester as a couple trying to get into a restaurant without Wnek’s stomach.  When she began to think of excuses for Novellie’s stomach bouncer -yes, stomach bouncer - well, if it’s possible for someone on the other side of the stage to corpse, that’s what I did.

Another highlight was George Potts’s recurring horrible visage (in a sketch; I have nothing against his actual face), whose ‘default face’ was one of absolute despair, accompanied by appropriately disturbing music.  It was beautiful, in comedy terms at least, or perhaps as an undiscovered work by Edvard Munch.  Either way, it was fun and frightening, and its final revival at the end of the show was a glorious example of how the sketch format should be exploited to create an incestuously interweaving and united show.

A sketch marketing the ‘Sounds of monopoly CD’, which included classics like ‘falling out with a family member’, was accompanied throughout by the honking geese noises of the woman a few rows down, so presumably it had her approval.  But regardless of her avian opinion, I liked it a lot.  Surreal and bizarre, this sketch exemplified the qualities of Broody as a whole.  In spite of the show’s slower moments, as the house lights came back up on a stage exhibiting only a smashed muffin from an earlier sketch, I was sad to leave, and a little bit hungry.