Interview: The Penny Dreadfuls

There are only so many nefarious moustaches you can twizzle; only so many megalomaniacal anarchists with fizzing bombs you can run to ground; only so many public school bully boys you can chase pell-mell around the empire.

So, the effortlessly witty Penny Dreadfuls, direct descendants of The Goons, have (temporarily) hung up their top hats and and frock coats and decided to embrace that most slippery of customers - modern, urban life.

When I spoke to David Reed, they were "tweaking the script" of their new show ahead of its world premiere at Greenwich. After that, they head off to their "spiritual home" of Edinburgh - a routine they followed in 2008 with the acclaimed Aeneas Faversham Forever.

The award-winning Penny Dreadfuls comprising David, Humphrey Ker and Thom Tuck started together in Edinburgh in 2002 with university troupe the Improverts and began touring with their own brand of Victorian comedy thrillers in 2005, garnering wider acclaim on stage and, later, on radio.

So why the switch from the twisted take on historical revisionism that provided them with their name and their huge following?

"It felt like time," said David. "We'd done three years of Victorian and it felt like we should change things. We'd love to go back to the Victorian one day but we thought why not try something brand new and stretch our wings.

"We're still fairly young and we didn't want to get stuck with the idea that we only ever did historical comedy in one very small bracket of time.

"Everything in the Victorian era was melodramatic and large and we wanted to try find more intimate characters by starting at an urban and contemporary starting point and growing them from grass roots."

And to jolt them into this new world, they've taken two other major creative decisions - to return to the sketch format; and to bring in a director to discipline their comedy.

"We hadn't devised any kind of style - we did what seemed to work - and it meant that we very rarely directed each other; we would just write and write and largely do improv performances. So we thought bringing in a director would give us avenues we wouldn't normally explore, maybe because they were outside our comfort zone."

So it must have been a daunting leap into the unknown?

"It was a learning curve because we hadn't done sketches for two years," said David.

"We were all very excited and we would sit round the table hoping to have something to bring to our director at the first rehearsal and we sat there and thought - 'erm, short ideas; things funny in a short amount of time...'

"But slowly and surely we learnt that it wasn't the kernel of the idea we needed, you just have to start running with anything and you'll find your way."

Despite the departure, The Penny Dreadful's trademark ripping yarn element is still threaded through the new material.

David said: "We haven't totally abandoned the habit of implying an enormous narrative before the sketch began and an enormous amount yet to come. They really are just trailers for epics.

"We're still trying to give it a bit of a world to inhabit because that's something we very much like. Every sketch could inhabit the same world. So this one is all loosely themed - it's night time in an urban environment and we've tried to give it the same palette so you can believe you are travelling from one house to another just down the road."

And what about the fans' reaction?

"It is something we were apprehensive about. It's always frightening when you depart from the thing that people seem to like about you. But we've been doing bits and bobs here and about and the reaction has been very positive."

And don't expect piles of self-flagellating EastEnders-style urban grime and anguish.
"It's set at night but it's not particularly dark. It's all rather surreal and jolly. We intend to make people happy about laugh rather than taking the TV show route - hating everyone and everything.

"People can expect a sketch show from people who have been doing this a while. Experienced people doing something new to them. It's exciting."

- The Penny Dreadfuls, Thursday-Saturday, July 8-10, 8.30pm, £15. Go to greenwichtheatre.org.uk.

Who's who
David said: "We want to makes sure this time that Tom will not play all the women but one by one we say, 'well this scene would work a lot better if Tom played the woman'. Humphrey because he's 6ft 7in will often play megalomaniacal villains in at least one or two sketches and there's me in between, the utility player. Owen Hargreaves."

Influences
David said: "We do write gags which a lot of people don't, we do like to have solid gags as well as character performances - I can see where the Blackadder things comes from - but we absolutely adore the Goon Show, Humphrey and I especially, and Tom's a massive Python as well as Peter Cook, Alexei Sayle, and Vic and Bob and Humphrey loves American comedy... the influences are everywhere. Everything you've ever laughed at has to influence what you're writing."

– From July 2010