By Jade Smith

Inspector Sydney Catchlove & the Nonsensical Summoning of What Was to Come was a cast-devised comedy by Mudcrabs—the ever-baffling acronym for the Melbourne University Comedy Revue Board—performed as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). This sketch comedy followed titular Inspector Catchlove and their bumbling detective agency OINK as they tried to solve a spate of bizarre theatre-related murders. 

As a fan of absurdity, sketch comedy and hilariously incompetent detectives, the premise of this show had me intrigued. One must give credit to the effective marketing and the relentless social media presence afforded to this show by its cast and creatives. 

That said, Mudcrabs’ Inspector Sydney Catchlove had room for improvement. 

Don’t get me wrong—there were the beginnings of many good jokes throughout this show. For example, the early-introduced concept of “Smoke Detectives” (the human predecessor to electronic smoke detectors, who use their superior smell to sniff out fires) was wonderfully silly and clever. And, it reminded me to change my smoke detector battery, so I have to extend my gratitude to Mudcrabs in that regard. Overall, however, many jokes could have been left as one-liners, rather than extrapolating them into a skit or running gag. This cast undeniably have potential as comedic actors and writers, but could have benefited from mentorship by a more experienced sketch comedian.

While I can’t be sure on this fact, it undoubtedly felt like the bulk of this show’s creation occurred via Zoom. Indeed, this would account for some of the slow pacing within scenes and across the show. I can appreciate the challenges presented by the COVID-safe requirements of current student theatre: for one, actors could not touch. There were some creative ways director James Robertson found to navigate this, such as having ‘dead bodies’ being rolled across the stage with contactless kicks. However, an over-reliance on characters being arrested and kidnapped—both very contact-dependant actions—was a directorial choice that I remain at odds with. The inability for physical contact made these scenes more bumbling than they needed to be and exacerbated the issues of awkward pacing and slow line delivery.  

Inspector Sydney Catchlove suffered from a distinct over-reliance on foreign accents as a form of comedy. Despite the valiant effort of actors, there was a noticeable struggle to keep the accents going for the whole show. While a silly voice sure can be funny in and of itself, lack of clear diction led to jokes being obscured, and the accents very quickly became grating. Perhaps the actors would have benefited from flexing their accent skills in contained skits, rather than attempting to keep them going for nearly the entire 60-minute run time.  

The strongest performance by far was by Olive Cullen, who shone in a bit-part as a murderous, speakeasy jazz singer. Her impressive vocal skills and comedic song-writing chops came to the fore in a delightfully funny song about how she “wasn’t a murderer”, complete with graphic descriptions of the murders she had “definitely not” committed. Begging the audience to “pay attention to the sexy French lyrics” and not the confession of her crimes, Cullen’s performance was a diamond in the rough. 

Likewise, Oscar Hales’ ventriloquism skills were impressive, and indeed did illicit some strong comedic moments. Ventriloquism isn’t a common thing to see on stage, and it was a fantastic choice by Hales and Director James Robertson to include this in the show. However, the show relied far too heavily on this gimmick, leading to cringe-inducing moments of audience silence as Hales’ Doctor Isenkov argued with his puppet. There was a certain irony in the climax of the show: Isenkov kidnaps our main character, who is tortured by the prospect of having to listen to an endless ventriloquy performance. I’ll let the punchline to this paragraph remain implied; indeed, if there’s anything Mudcrabs has taught me it’s that sometimes you need to know when to stop. Hales and Robertson would have done well in identifying that sometimes, when it comes to gimmicks such as ventriloquy, less is more. 

To give credit where it’s due, the signs were present of a well-run backstage—lightning-fast costume quick-changes and careful coordination of props must be credited to Stage Manager Victoria Wong and Prop Designer Atreya G Krishna. Krishna’s costumes were likewise very effective, and consistently added characterisation and comedy to the show—for example, the lobster costume will sit in my memory for a long time to come. Likewise, the choice to have Hales’ puppet roll onto stage on a pink doll’s stroller was one of the silliest and overall funniest moments of the show. However, the production side was let down by sound cues that often ran too long and too loud, obscuring the already-mumbled dialogue of actors, as well as unimaginative lighting and set design. 

Sketch comedy does not need to blow the audience away with innovative production design—the jokes carry the show. Unfortunately, that was not always the case for Mudcrabs, leading to a show that fell flat. Set items remained stagnant throughout the show, and the main backdrop—a wall of photos, news clippings, and string in that classic detective aesthetic—looked sparsely populated and haphazard. The design would have benefitted from a tighter use of space on these back flats and from the addition of more elements and more string, perhaps doubling what was already there. Additionally, having set items that could be moved around easily to add dynamism to different scenes would have gone a long way—for example, two or three chairs instead of one. These could then be placed in front of the desk for ‘interviews’ between criminals and detectives, around the table for tea at a suspect’s house, or in centre stage as a park bench where characters sit to exchange quips. The lighting design could have taken greater advantage of black-outs and brown-outs between scenes and played with the use of spotlights (budget allowing) or with different colour films over the standard rig LEDs, especially to differentiate the flashback scenes from present day.

A final moment that I must mention is the reveal that one of Hales’ characters, a kinky, murderous, uppity housewife named Margaret, was actually the evil Russian Doctor in disguise. To the critical eye, this was an unfortunate continuation of tried-and-true transphobic media tropes: a deranged man donned women’s clothing in order to ‘trick’ those around him and to commit violence. I’ve linked two articles here and here that I believe explore the problems of this trope in a highly accessible way for those wishing the investigate the topic further. I don’t blame those involved in this show for the oversight, and don’t doubt that this joke was intended to be harmless. However, in an age of increasing aggression against transgender women and proliferation of TERF rhetoric on our campus, do cisgender theatre makers—myself included—not have a responsibility to retire such tired and transphobic tropes? 

In summary, Mudcrabs’ Inspector Sydney Catchlove was a show with potential that was unfortunately let down by its hit-or-miss comedy, production design and directorial choices. Weird is good. Silly is good. Nonsense is fantastic. However, the caveat here is that the comedy must be self-sufficient: an underdeveloped plot or minimal production design is perfectly okay, so long as the jokes carry themselves. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Inspector Sydney Catchlove. The jokes were, as mentioned, full of potential. There were some genuinely funny concepts here, but I think that the creative team would have benefitted greatly from another round or two of revisions before taking this show to the stage.

This was clearly a cast and crew with some real talent, even if it wasn’t fully realised in Inspector Catchlove. I wish the creatives of this show all the best in their future ventures, and encourage all involved to keep creating, keep writing, and keep acting. You can’t win them all, and I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what Mudcrabs do next.