Review: LOLA AND JO: FOCUS ON, Latitude Festival

Returning to the Edinburgh Fringe for their second year, Lola and Jo want to try out some of their new sketches. Having recruited market research company FocusOn, Latitude Festival seems the perfect focus group. Experimenting with the form of sketch comedy, the focus group and audience response was not overwhelmingly positive.

Receiving name tags on arrival at the Cabaret Tent, the audience becomes the focus group for the sketches. These include a hen party (gone very wrong), and wake-planners who obviously double as wedding-planners. They're a tad gimmicky, but make for some great one-liners, such as the installed disco ball. The final sketch is by far the funniest of the three shown, set at an HR away day. Giving a presentation about teamwork, Lola and Jo perform their special skill: parkour. Cue amazingly terrible moves and awkward comparisons between parkour and professions, which are genuinely hilarious.

This is the second show of the festival to bring some structure to the normally disparate sketch genre (the other being hotel based Goodbear). This idea is so meta and unlike any comedy show I've seen. The HR away day also seems to have equal (if not more) potential for setting a whole show in, again providing the opportunity for name tags. But aside from a quick introduction to the focus group at the beginning, this theming falls away as soon as the sketches start.

Seeing a shortened version of the one hour show (edited for the Cabaret stage), I wonder how much more of the focus group is brought into the show. If you're going to set this in a particular situation, have fun with it and commit. One of the most vocal responses from our audience was on the production of free food, a staple of the focus group setup. Play this up: have pens and paper, a flip chart easel, have cheesy motivational signs, and ones saying "One jammy dodger per person".

Playing themselves, playing market researchers, playing themselves, Lola and Jo are on fire in their own sketches. True character actors, they relish each role from the energetic hen weekend to the awkwardness of the office workers. The actual market research leaders could do with some work, though a large part of this is down to their chemistry with the audience (or lack thereof).

For a show which is set in a focus group environment, audience interaction is surprisingly minimal. Those given name tags at the start are spoken at, not to. As the show opens, members of the focus group are reminded to remain focused on the topic at hand and not to bring their own increasingly specific interests into the discussion. Allowing the audience to speak at this point could lead to some improvised fun, probably more so than the scripted jokes.

The final sketch again feels like an obvious time to involve the audience. As the duo start to name and shame those who rejected their parkour invitation, I shrank a little further into the ground, covering my name tag for fear of taking part. But I needn't fear, because again nothing came of it. You have people wearing name tags, so why not use them. What better way to end the sketch than have them come up and try it out (aside from possible health and safety reasons)?

While lighting upon an interesting concept, the execution is disappointing. Perhaps Lola and Jo should Focus On the audience in front of them more.

Lola and Jo: Focus On at the Edinburgh Fringe, 3 - 26 August 2017

Photo Credit: The Corner Shop PR

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