Wandering into The Lowry studio room to see Gein’s Family Gift Shop, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect; and, to be honest, I’m still not certain what I actually experienced or what I can tell you to expect if you decide to brave their strange little world of comedy, but I will do my best.
Gein’s Family Gift Shop are a sketch troupe composed of Kath Hughes, James Meehan, Edward Easton, and Kiri Pritchard-McLean, who provided a short stand-up set by way of warm-up. The group originally formed in Salford after the members finished studying, and they all seemed very excited by the prospect of performing in the city of their (I presume hilarious) birth. The performance itself, however, began with the performers meandering onstage in their underwear (minus Kiri) and dressing in a standard neutral combination of white polo shirt and black shorts. This felt slightly too on-the-nose theatre-graduate-esque for my personal taste, but did a brilliant job of introducing them to the audience as the informal and genuinely funny troupe they turned out to be, with a wonderful blend of deceptive surface apathy covering a seriously polished performance. 
After this introduction, and a short warm-up sketch, however, the trio of sketch artists wandered away to be replaced with Kiri Pritchard-McLean, the stand-up. While Pritchard-McLean did a wonderful job of introducing the audience to the performers – although, by the cheers, many of the spectators were already well acquainted with the act – I felt as though her brand of stand-up slightly jarred with the tone of the rest of the piece. While the ‘warm-up’ consisted of a handful of fairly funny stories one of my friends might tell me (I’m not sure what that says about my friends) along with a couple of genuinely hilarious one-liners, the sketches themselves were more into the realm of the absurd, with over-emphasized characters clashing slightly with what seemed like the naturalness of the stand-up. Each of the two acts seriously deserved to be on that stage, but at times they did feel more like two separate performances which may have been more enjoyable had they been integrated more.
The characterisation I thoroughly enjoyed, with each artist building themselves an easily identifiable persona that helped the sketches flow quite effortlessly into one another. The sketches themselves were a strange, blurry blend of breezed-over punchlines, sudden shocking crudeness and absolutely excellent physicality. A couple of moments did make me squirm in my seat slightly, particularly in a mimed descent into Hell which I will not describe, but on the whole the night was carried by good acting, enthusiastic performers and some hilarious moments.
So, I did my best, but I’m still not sure how exactly to describe Gein’s Family Gift Shop. From the crowd’s reaction a number of them had been audience members before, and the troupe seem to have garnered a decent fan base and great success. If nothing else, I can say that I definitely admire their gutsy brand of sketch comedy, and I hope that their return home was as enjoyable for them as it was for their audience.
Reviewer: Hannah Torbitt
Reviewed: 17th February 2016
