Anyone who has every worked in a front-facing customer service job will be sure to understand much of the slapstick humour on display by the Kallo Collective in their latest show, Receptionists. In Edinburgh as part of ‘From Start to Finnish’, an annual project designed to showcase Finnish Performing Arts at the Fringe, Inga Björn and Kristiina Tammisalo bring their madcap clowning to a 5-star hotel setting and show some of the absurdities that go on behind the scenes.
Much of the pair’s comedy relies on perfect comic timing which they have in abundance as they have petty squabbles over where the fruit bowl should go, the appropriate response to the ringing of the desk bell and who will answer the phone should it ring…
The two are a perfect foible for each other and are particularly amusing when they come out from behind their desk and realise one of them has lost her all important “flibbity” – a scandal of seismic proportions according to the seriousness they both take to retrieve the object.
There is some typically eccentric audience participation which is impressively worked given that the pair use few words in their hour long show and so communicating exactly what they want from the participants is probably a risky game to play with an Edinburgh Fringe audience. However, it works.
The room is hot and the energy doesn’t let up for the full hour, the sweat on the performers’ faces testament to the work they are putting in to getting the laughs, and yet, there is something missing. It feels like the Receptionists would have been more successful had it been a shorter sketch amidst other work rather than trying to pull together a whole hour from just these two characters. There is no doubting that Björn and Tammisalo have talent and it would have been good to see what else they could do.