one4review | On 21, Aug 2013

****

ACMS is the love/brain child of John Luke Roberts and Thom Tuck (and probably some other people), who also happen to be the comperes. In its non-fringe guise it lives in London, appearing one night a week as a forum for ‘comedy that might not work elsewhere’; here, it’s on three nights a week in Stand one.  

‘Mild carnage’, ‘riot’ and ‘hilarious’ might be appropriate descriptions for the night I saw. Twelve very different comedians presented twelve very different sets: pub golf (they’ll tell you it never happened), blues harmonica, insults to Eskimos and why reviewers are bad doesn’t even begin to cover it. Some ideas worked better than others but some also took more risks than others, performing something other than excerpts from their shows.

This is a properly fun show, which works best when the audience gets involved (via the list of permitted heckles) – although that is slightly hindered by the room layout. Under the bluster its entirely professional, if not entirely predictable.

Reviewed by Laura

Stand One, 23:30 (Tue, Wed, Thur)