Totally Tom

If your only exposure so far to Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton is from their rather lacklustre appearances on BBC3’s “Live At The Electric”, be prepared for a shock. This year’s Totally Tom show is possibly the best hour of long-form sketch comedy I’ve seen since The Pajama Men.

The two Toms erupt onto their stage, and their performance is all the more impressive when that stage is no more than a 8 foot square corner of a portacabin. As they move seamlessly from character to character, using no props other than a chair, their ridiculous prison-based tale unfolds in a dazzling array of physical comedy, wordplay, dance, 90s dance music, and flameless poi. The dialogue moves fast, the story hammers along from sketch to sketch revealing ludicrously inventive characters who never outstay their welcome, and as the Toms swap personas every few minutes you’re never far from something new and wonderfully silly.

Rarely pausing for breath and sweating more than can strictly be healthy, Palmer and Stourton have created a show that manages to maintain its own weird logic as well as a consistent stream of jokes, puns, pratfalls and plot twists while simultaneously providing something to please everybody. See this while you still can.