Movin’ On Up! With Politically Erect

Written by and starring Ben Anderson, Alex Kempton and Sam Jacobsen, sketch group Politically Erect have themselves a very clever, astute and funny group of performers.

Using the premise of attending a self-help seminar as a basis for their skits, Politically Erect (a name I’m surprised at having not been taken already) cover a wide range of topics: British game shows, asylum seekers, intelligent design and pyramid schemes, among others, all get a look in. Their act is sharp and cynical and their individual comic personas are so well-honed it is difficult to tell where they have veered from the script.

Despite their obvious talents as comedic performers and the mostly-high quality of their material, your patience for the act will depend on how much you enjoy theatre. On TV, sketches will be brief and returned to frequently - their familiarity often as central to the humour as the sketch itself - but on stage and as a one-time viewing a sketch show can suffer from the fact that it is not as immediate or as interactive as say stand-up, and you're sitting on an uncomfortable chair. All of which these lads are already no doubt aware of.