If you don't laugh, they'll buy you a pint!
That’s the promise from Irish sketch team Foil Arms and Hog as they get ready for a nine-city tour of North America, beginning in Toronto on next Wednesday, March 16, and concluding back north of the border, in Ottawa, on March 27.
The trio have achieved critical acclaim at the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, in 2018 and 2019 (“Quite simply, a sensation” said Edinburgh Festivals Magazine), and, during the pandemic, sketches like “When Irish People Can’t Speak Irish,” “How to Speak Dublin,” “Getting Past U.S. Immigration,” “Different Countries Learn French,” "The Word Play Hotel" and “Getting Past Dutch Immigration" helped pushed their online views over the 200 million mark.
Meantime, Keegan-Michael Key of Key & Peele, arguably America’s greatest comedy sketch team, has expressed his admiration (saying, with expletive deleted, “........ awesome, so good").
The group is comprised of Sean Finegan (Foil), Conor McKenna (Arms) and Sean Flanagan (Hog), who are all from the Terenure/Rathfarnham area, are in their mid-30s and have been performing since they got together at University College Dublin (when students of architecture, engineering and genetics respectively).
"I'm a natural comic foil, always playing the straight man," Finegan said in 2016, when explaining their nicknames to the Irish Independent. "Conor often has his limbs flying around like John Cleese's funny walk and Sean has a knack of grabbing all the limelight for himself. So, Foil, Arms and Hog - it sounds better than boring, clumsy and selfish."The other shows are Philadelphia (Perelman), March 18; Boston (Schubert) March 19; Washington DC (Lincoln), March 20; Pittsburg (Oaks Theatre), March 22; Detroit (Royal Oak), March 24; Cleveland (Agora), March 25; and New York City (Town Hall), March 26.
For full details of the 2022 World Tour, including a return trip to the U.S. in the fall, visit the group’s website here.
