****

" This is one for the traditionalists among us. It's a show from another generation of musical comedy, but the wealth of experience of these performers (they've been going longer than the Fringe itself) is marvellous to behold. The atmosphere was tranquil and inoffensive, much like a dinner with genial uncles, as the distinctly senior-spectrum audience watched these three vaudeville veterans (plus younger bassist) launch into their array of joyous and original ditties. Their witty and artisan-polished repertoire of music from flamenco to the blues, slapstick comedy and harmonious satire places them firmly as the heirs of that deeply English tradition of Noel Coward and Flanders and Swan. Hardly edgy Fringe fare, but we had a jolly lovely time."

What is there left say about Instant Sunshine? For over 30 years Peter Christie, David Barlow and Alan Maryon Davis have been gentlemen and players, with the emphasis on gentle - although they do play very well. Their every performance strikes a blow for the educated middle classes and for the humorously well behaved.

With the addition of David Barlow’s son Tom playing a mean bass and occasionally joining intelligent four-part harmonies, the immaculately-clad quartet fills your hour with filigree entertainment.

Their songs have names such as Paradise in Tring, Nouveau, Poor and Garden Shed.

They do flamenco-influenced numbers about wearing glasses, a wonderful tribute to the Kings Singers (who had training…three years at Kings College Cambridge, four years in Madam Tussauds) and some lovely spoken character pieces. They are masters of an increasingly rare art, silliness. When they sing the Monster in the Goldfish Pond at Number 7B you are listening to the ageing love-children of Flanders and Swan and Kit and the Widow.

Their every second is honed for comedy. They have more twinkle than Sirius. Watch any one of them at any time and you will be entertained. They finish a show that has a very mixed audience stamping their feet and shouting for more with a song specially written to demonstrate Davis’s expertise on the exotic percussion.

Instant Sunshine are too warm to be cool and too polite to be cutting edge. What they are is very, very entertaining.

 

This is Radio Times preview of the BBC2 film Roads to Stardom produced by David Buckton and transmitted on Wednesday 24th December 1980. We understand the film will shortly be viewable through BBC Archives.