{COMEDY} Reviews
TIM KEY A sublime and spirited Slut sequel ●●●●●
Following up an award-winning success is never the easiest of operations. Perhaps this is why Tim Key has taken two years out to get his sequel into shape, having used this same space last year as a testing ground with a short run of the Edinburgh Comedy Award-nabbing The Slutcracker. The wait has been gloriously well worth it. If anything, Masterslut trumps his 2009 show for ambition, daring and downright silliness while the whole effect is actually quite moving. While The Slutcracker was a delightful mish-mash of poetry,
film, comic interludes and audience-handling, crow-barred into a Pleasance Courtyard cabin, Key’s new hour is given a dramatic focus in the shape of a fully-run and extremely bubbly bath. But this is not just stuck in the middle of the room as a novelty factor, instead it acts as the foil for almost everything that happens thereafter. The tub creates an umbilical bond to some of the gorgeous filmed sequences and is utilised as a trigger to his audience interaction (don’t worry you won’t be chucked in) and the potentially true childhood memories.
Key has at times expressed occasional disappointment that he isn’t treated seriously as a poet; here, his splendid verse is effectively a sideshow to the real deal. He even points out the toils which he has to undertake for his seemingly tossed-off poems with a screened display of the many drafts (some no doubt wildly exaggerated) that he can go through before reaching a satisfactory conclusion. As much as he loves his daily baths (up to two a day he
claims), you wonder whether he will be able to stomach one after August, given the lengths he goes to in producing one of the most memorable finales in Fringe comedy history. This is sublime, busy and evocative work from a man who keeps getting better and better, roughly every two years. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 29 Aug, 9.45pm, £12–£14 (£11–£13).
THE BOY WITH TAPE ON HIS FACE Line up early for a talented mime ●●●●●
TIFFANY STEVENSON Cuddly musings on Cockneys and kids ●●●●● THE UNEXPECTED ITEMS A largely threadbare and shallow show ●●●●●
L A V I T S E F
The Boy has become a victim of his own success. If you want to see this show, turn up early and be prepared to queue, for someone here has made a grave error in the choice of space. For a show that rests so obviously on the visual, it is far too large, and the gentle rake of the seating makes for an uncomfortable frustrated meerkat effect in the whole rear third of the theatre. It is to the credit, then, of the gaffer-taped Sam Wills, that he manages to detract from this with a swift hour of joyously innocent slapstick. With the low-slung satchel and loping gait of a schoolboy, he comes across like a particularly imaginative kid playing with the simplest of toys – plus a few pliant helpers among the audience – to build silent scenarios both familiar (slow dancing with his own arm) and bafflingly unexpected (the scene involving a plastic lion).
With an impish lift of the eyebrows or an
exasperated wring of the hands, he conveys all he needs to hundreds of people, spreading the silliness of his delightful imagination all the way to the back of the room. (Laura Ennor) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 28 Aug, 9.10pm, £10.50–£12.50 (£9.50–£11.50).
34 THE LIST 25 Aug–22 Sep 2011
When she took her Scottish boyfriend along to a good old-fashioned Cockney knees-up in her own backyard, Tiffany Stevenson couldn’t get out of there quick enough. A horrible vision of her possible future had presented itself and she liked it not one bit. Once you get past the early abortion and domestic abuse gags, an intriguing theme rises up of converging identities. So, chavs and the British royals are inextricably linked by fashion while she stands by her resolutely working-class roots in the face of the yummy mummy brigade. While Stevenson occasionally flirts with danger,
she cunningly references the most controversial public jokes of the past year by insisting that her material about a boy called Harvey is absolutely not about a disabled child, rather they’re zooming in on his publicity-mad mother. Being a mum forms a large part of Cavewoman and she reflects on how different her own life would have been had she joined the maternity ranks years ago. Were she to be in charge of a teenage child now, you imagine that this show would be a far more brutal and savage affair. (Brian Donaldson) ■ The Stand III & IV, 558 7272, until 28 Aug (not 25), 2.25pm, £8 (£7).
This quintet has garnered a zillion YouTube hits for their amusing ‘Gap-Yah’ sketches and there’s a murmur of recognition as Matt Lacey wanders on to deliver a new atrocity from the chundering Orlando. In a curious twist of Pub Landlord proportions, there are loud Orlando-types in the queue, clearly not put off by their imminent portrayal during a show which is, unfortunately, high on threadbare routines. The title of the show is off-putting enough – The
Unexpected Items Are on It, In the Zone, Off the Hook and Down with the Kids – but worse still is the packing in of as many ‘celebrities’ as possible into a sketch hour, as though merely mentioining Alan Rickman, Piers Morgan and Blue Peter equates to a job well done. Afraid not, people, it just smacks of lazy thinking. It would also be interesting to hear what Chris Morris would have to say about the very Brass Eye news item about Facebook.
On the upside, the superhero thread does have a spectacularly messy pay-off near the end while the Jessie J puritan-rap has legs. There’s very little unexpected here other than how shallow the crew’s material turns out to be. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 29 Aug, 4.30pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9).