Mates Rates – The Golden Age Begins threatens to “boggle the mind,” through its innovative combination of sketch comedy and social media. Audiences are provided plastic balls and invited to throw them at the stage to signify a ‘like’ when they find something particularly funny, offering an instant dopamine hit for the performers, and a feeling of active involvement for the audience.
The show is a mixture of live comedy and pre-recorded sketches, projected onto a screen on the stage. While it seems counter-intuitive to pre-record sections of a live performance, this works to introduce sketches that would be difficult to lay the comedic groundwork for otherwise. This also serves to provide satisfying endings to sketches that would be difficult to conclude on stage.
Drawing on the group’s roots on social media, much of the show pokes fun at stereotypical social media content, such as in the opening sketch that parodies ‘Hustlers University’ types that sell online courses. This is most prominent in an on-screen segment, mimicking a screen recording of someone scrolling TikTok. Every online trope you can think of is brought to life here, from people doing food reviews in their cars, to sexy cooking videos of men making pasta with their shirts off.
The show starts strong but slightly peters out towards the end. Some sketches are guilty of dragging on for too long, and many punchlines can be reduced to just being something vaguely sexual. This isn’t necessarily a weakness in itself, but when it occurs so frequently it can become a bit tired. These issues are summarised well in the final sketch of the show, “The World’s Sexiest Magicians.” As you can imagine, most of the humour in this segment is sex-based, and it lasts slightly too long, leaving it feeling stagnant by the end.
Despite these comedic issues, the show is undeniably fun. The show only consists of three performers, but they involve the audience so heavily that you end up feeling like a collective fourth member of the group. Having built a following on social media, Mates Rates caters to that audience with re-occurring characters from their online content, and a show that vamps on common social media themes. Making its UK debut, Mates Rates – The Golden Age Begins is a fast-paced, witty sketch show that shows a lot of promise.
Mates Rates – The Golden Age Begins is running until 29 August (not 20 or 24) at 10 Dome at Pleasance Dome.
Buy tickets here.
Image provided by Pleasance Press Office to The Student as press material.
