If you enjoy Scottish folk songs, mime comedy, and plentiful audience interaction that can go oh so many ways, then Scotland! is for you. Sadly, though, I don’t think it was for me.
The event, created and performed by comedy trio The Latebloomers, starts off to a rousing and highly energetic entrance, throwing you straight into whatever these guys want to do, but during the first bit about fishing, I was left unsure as to where jokes were supposed to be.
Scotland! is incredibly unique and filled with the kind of broad appeal that at least my audience was eating up every second of, but I kept feeling unmotivated. Perhaps it was that my audience were easily singing along to the numerous Scottish folk songs peppered throughout whereas I was left in silence like going to an Eagles game and everyone singing the team song and I’ve never watched a game or even heard the song before.
I honestly felt a bit alienated by this wide amount of audience participation and interaction with comedy bits that just didn’t land or where left in rather awkward states due to some audience members being the wrong choices. If you’re going to have an extended sequence about deer hunting, maybe don’t get the septuagenarian woman with a bandage on her foot and who requires help down the stairs to be your frantic deer.
I’m also not sure if these three are actually Scottish or not, but I felt like the references and usages of stereotypical Scottish things (the three performers all dressed in tartan and one in a full kilt) was just cliché. It would be like if there was a show called Australia! and our performers came out in singlets and thongs and proceeded with an hour’s worth of Crocodile Dundee references while drinking Foster’s and singing Men at Work and Cold Chisel intermittingly.
The audience was eating everything that The Latebloomers had to offer, but I was left in the cold, watching the show almost objectively, then retreated further inwards when everyone started singing and hand-holding to “Auld Lang Syne”, which is perhaps the most cliché song in existence. Scotland! is for many people of you out there, except this reviewer. See it if you want to.