A quirky rendition of a beloved childhood classic.
The Tin Can Bros have taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with their Off Broadway show The Solve It Squad to great anticipation for fans of the LA based troupe. When a group of child detectives grow up and reunite in an effort to solve their only unsolved case, they must return to their roots to find their way back to each other and their love of crime solving with two decades of baggage in tow. With all the familiar trappings of the Mystery Inc, minus the titular character, this show was a familiar and fun grown up parody of a childhood classic.
Existing perfectly in the Fringe landscape, this show is witty and dark and does brilliant justice to the source material. With a runtime of just over an hour, the show was full on and jam packed with over the top and larger than life characters that carried us through the familiar narrative structure. Overall the piece was effective with grounded dialogue and well informed physical comedy. The story was engaging and nuanced with humorous interpretations for the grown up squad members and how it affected their ability to reunite. Out with the performance, itself, there is something incredibly laudable in continuing to move forward with the show in light of cast absence, and the team gave a valiant effort to keep the show running smoothly.
Unfortunately, candidly, this show was a mess. Technically speaking the wonderful dialogue was hard to understand and often garbled and quiet even sitting relatively close to the stage as the performance was unmic’d. The pacing from scene to scene was either rushed or painfully slow and when coupled with the wild prop usage and miss-timed sound cues gave the whole experience an unpolished quality. I do not believe this performance was a fair demonstration of the show as a whole and engaged with many patrons who were on their second or third viewing of the show. It is an unfortunate reality that every company has off performances, and it appears this was one of them.