The Small Poppies’ promotional material says they are from Canberra, but their show has detail and video that suggests they must know Melbourne pretty well. An opening sketch poking fun at faddish urbanites staking out milk-crates successfully mimics the inner-city scenester scene, and is a preview of the terrific flexibility of the actors. I only registered when they took their bows that there were only three of them. Adam Brodie-McKenzie in particular effectively inhabited many different characters, but Caitlin Croucher and Andrew Nichols also deftly shifted styles.

As the last on a billet of sketch shows, Poppycock! took a more political approach having cracks at George Bush, aggressive atheism and “stupid people”. This directness means it doesn’t feel like a regular sketch show, because there is a central message and the sketches themselves also contain a whole lot of political opinion. This means that even when they weren’t getting many laughs everyone remained interested in seeing what they had to say on the topic.

It’s fantastic to see a young group ploughing into the cultural clashes which dominate the global Op-Ed pages. They’ve clearly gone to an effort to synthesise their material and give the audience a take-away message and the applause at the end showed it was appreciated. It was not a hit laughter-wise on this night but you can check their website (http://thesmallpoppies.com.au/video.html) to see if it’s your thing. Otherwise I’ll be interested in seeing how their ideas and perspectives develop and it would be good to have them back again next year.

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