The Umbilical Brothers: The Distraction

By Ron Bingham

Australian comedy legends The Umbilical Brothers are back in Edinburgh with a second run of their sold out 2023 show The Distraction. With a mix of technical wizardry, loads of cameras, props, tablet sized screens and two large green panels festooning the stage, Shane and David treat the audience to an hour of mayhem and surreal visual effects, all in real time on the stage. They are ably assisted by Bob the techie (apparently Bob has a show at 1am with Shane doing the tech job, but I can’t find it in the programme).

They claimed, at about the ten minute mark, that they have never experienced so many technical problems. This could be true, as many of the high-tech items were playing up tonight. Still, while the problems were being sorted, Shane and Dave kept the audience entertained with a running commentary or silly visual jokes on the big screen. Members of the audience helped in the show, mostly by having cameras pointed at us and allowing the Umbilicals to do terrible things to our images on the screen. Including me, but I still don’t think Shane got my voice quite right and at least they didn’t explode my head. There are also some scenes of giant rampaging babies.

The room, which seats around 200, was full of happy punters who all appeared to thoroughly enjoy the show. Even though I was there on a Monday (traditionally a day of rest for most shows), I recommend booking a ticket, as it’s a good fun family friendly show that’ll have you chuckling for days over some of the antics.

Four stars!

The Distraction is on at Assembly Roxy until August 25

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/umbilical-brothers-the-distraction