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Creepy Boys: SLUGS
Two “Creepy Boys” shuffle onto the stage in sleeping bags as gastropods with vagina mouths. They regurgitate and eat a spoonful of beans, sing a song about Donald Duck and his lack of trousers, strip to reveal duck-like underwear with a strategically cut hole, offer the audience sweets, and eventually unleash a pantomime horse that shoots us in the face. Rate this experience out of five. It feels like a mad request.
Beneath the mania, however, lies an Edinburgh Comedy Award–nominated piece of abstract performance art about a desire for nothing: innocence, physical substance without connotation — the thought equivalent of slugs. The opening song announces this mission plainly: the show is about nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. But achieving nothingness is harder than it looks, and the struggle to do so fuels this wild ride.
Through an anxiety-fuelled stream of puppet shows, songs, sketches, and even a conversation with a paper Joni Mitchell, the Creepy Boys repeatedly demonstrate that everything is connected to something — and not just something neutral, but something politically or socially charged. A slideshow contrasts an egg (nothing) with a battery hen (something), and a person dressed as a ghost (nothing) with the same image altered by the addition of a pointed white hat (something). Even arbitrary physical movements performed by S.E. Grummet are instinctively ranked by the audience as more or less “something.”
Grummet’s trans identity becomes a particularly pointed example of this “something-ification.” They cannot simply sing a song without it becoming a “trans song.” In one moment, the duo is prancing with their trousers off; in the next, erupting into despair at the impossibility of being neutral. If they are not the same as each other, then their bodies carry meaning, implication, and politics. Nothingness becomes unreachable.
The visual elements of the show really elevate it. There’s a handmade aesthetic that is fun and, ironically, quite sweet. A projection of a miniature paper set, manipulated by either one of the Creepy Boys while the other acts in the scene, has real charm. It’s detailed and nicely crafted — the antithesis of AI-generated, soulless fodder.
That said, some stylistic choices feel slightly dated: colourful geometric shapes and those specific cargo trousers they wear hark back to 2021, and sticking googly eyes on everything — including the genitals — is slightly reminiscent of a 90s art school project. At times, the humour veers into mild cringe — calling guns “pew-pews,” a childishness of tone creeping in occasionally, and a tad too much screaming. Alongside some of the wildness on stage, it may lose some people. The show is always intelligent and forceful, but occasionally its appeal thins. It could do with a facelift for 2026.
One of the final scenes lands particularly well. Beginning with comic timing and exaggerated sincerity, they pivot to gun violence in America. The audience teeters between laughter and a sudden “oh God, I should not be laughing” feeling. That is the central danger the show exposes: innocent fun can become a profound difficulty at the drop of a pair of cargos.
Perhaps the purest “nothing” in the piece is what the performers gain from it. By their own admission, this is hardly a transferable skill. It will not make them cash-rich or bring them fame. Are they even doing anything to change the world? The show ends with a video of the pair burrowed underground together, hopeless, before releasing the gun-toting pantomime horse.
It’s definitely impactful, and the audience response feels divided — some fully immersed, others visibly unsure. Outside performance-art circles, its appeal will inevitably be limited. But SLUGS commits fiercely to its premise, is completely cohesive, and achieves what it sets out to do. Whether you admire it or recoil from it, it doesn’t beat around the bush. They don’t ask for stars; they ask for opinion, and they are thorough in putting their point across.
Writers: S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Josh Sharp: ta-da!
More people than they would like to admit feel a flicker of excitement at the word PowerPoint. Few elements of office life have been resurrected for entertainment purposes so enthusiastically: fringe shows, TikTok trends, even full-blown PowerPoint parties. With ta-da! Josh Sharp makes the most of this format while stripping it to its bare bones — mostly blank white slides with black letters, which are often beautifully arranged as minimalist images that give the illusion of detail. There are 2,000 of them over seventy-five minutes.
According to Sharp, this is
theatertheatre, not just stand-up, which he calls “bullshit” — especially considering the extra effort involved: he has chained himself to 2,000 cues. But bullshit feels like a deliberately harsh way of simply describing illusion. His jokes work like mathematical formulas or magic tricks, twisting spelling, punctuation and capitalisation — setting what’s on screen against what he says aloud. He is a master of irony and layers.There are so many bad pronoun jokes about at the moment, but one of the favourite moments here is an observation that as we age, our gender becomes less visible: we become less of a he or a she or a they, and more of a that. Sharp delights in the hidden implications of seemingly unassuming words, finding punchlines in their grammatical structure — a kind of verbal trickery that has you laughing at jokes built almost entirely from language itself. It’s good bullshit.
He paces the evening expertly. Repetition forms the beating heart of the show, and live, the rhythm he creates consistently triggers laughter. He begins with punchy, word-based, quick-fire jokes, then moves into more complex narrative work surrounding his mother’s death and his own near-death experience — just as we begin to run out of energy for so much laughter. From there, he shifts again, into a more intellectual section about Schrödinger’s cat. There are also clear threads throughout. “Time <—> is a line, that’s how it works,” he says — a simple thought that is not really simple at all. We know this because he has played with it so thoroughly, fooling us again and again.
Some of the humour here is quite blue, with a considerable focus on cum, much of it tied to his coming-out experience and his unbridled gallop into the New York gay scene after years of suppressing his sexuality in the South. Yet it is so rigorously shaped by an understanding of joke structure and language that it never feels like smut for its own sake or shock for shock’s sake.
It’s not often you get a show that is so much fun in the moment and then so interesting to talk about afterwards, but this is that. The techno music before the show starts sets us up for a party, and then we are suddenly in philosophy, maths, grammar, science, grief, sexuality — and it is still a party. In terms of charisma, Sharp is a superstar. This especially comes through in a viral video of him watching Adele in concert with his dad: his dad belting along is endearing, but Sharp’s whooping beside him is hilarious. His energy feels boundless. He is an artist — and he is not afraid to tell us so.
The show finishes with a trick-trick: he deliberately messes up a pick-a-card routine, and the final slides of the show turn out to be part of the deck itself. It is a strangely moving ending, one that means everything and nothing. Was the point of the show that we can read one thing and hear another? That time is a line? That Sharp is gay? Why do these shows have to end on a point at all? By refusing to pick one clear meaning, is he once again skewering the “industry-standard” expectation? It feels like another trick. It takes a sharp thinker to be so cheeky.
Ta-da! is an instant recommendation. You leave the theatre completely satisfied: you’ve laughed, you’ve thought, you’ve felt. Sharp keeps you fully in the moment while you’re there, and thinking about it long after you’ve left.
Written by: Josh Sharp
Published with the Reviews Hub
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Krapp’s Last Tape
Going to see a Samuel Beckett play, there is a certain expectation: no loud costumes, wild plots, or pelting gags. Audiences strap in, sharpen their senses, and prepare to notice every small detail and stylistic choice. This one-off production of Krapp’s Last Tape at Stanley Arts Centre, followed by a short Q&A with David Westhead, who plays Krapp, and director Stockard Channing, is classically Beckettian: brief, unceremonious, and reveling in simple foolishness.
The Stanley Arts hall is vast: high ceiling, with rows of chairs surrounding a very small, cluttered stage. At its centre sits a table for Krapp, strewn with unravelled spools of tape. There is a particular tension in a room that is both so quiet and so full — so many people and objects poised to disturb the stillness. I wanted to click my pen to take notes, but even that might have drawn attention.
Despite the scale of the auditorium, actor Westhead has an uncanny ability to make it feel as though he is entirely alone. Surrounded by silent faces, he never acknowledges others overtly, yet remains fully expressive. With his mouth slightly open and chin raised, he averts his gaze from the tape as he listens, as though the younger voice were emerging from his own mind rather than a machine. He follows Beckett’s stage directions with almost computer-like precision.
It is striking to watch a performance governed by such tightly coded instructions in the age of AI, and stranger still how human and natural it feels — a humanity encoded by a man writing sixty-eight years ago. This is a testament to Westhead’s skill as an actor, making memorised movements appear instinctive. During the Q&A, an audience member asks how he makes the character feel so authentic. He responds that the experiences described in the play — parental loss, the loss of love — are things most people encounter at some point. Beneath the rigidity of Beckett’s form lie emotions the actor cannot help but infuse with humanity.
Replication and repetition are, of course, central to the play. The tape is replayed; memories are replayed. Some moments Krapp chooses to skip, others he returns to. Each memory is recontextualised by how long he allows himself to sit with it, or avoid it altogether. Where he is most enthusiastic in youth, he is most dismissive in old age. The embarrassment of hearing his past overzealous happiness is consistently funny. His indulgence in memories of a lost lover is equally amusing.
There is a concerted effort to keep the production brief. Within Beckett’s stage directions, Channing has chosen not to stretch the timeline. Where some productions of Krapp’s Last Tape run over an hour, this one comes in at just under forty-three minutes — a remarkably precise figure. In the post-show Q&A, Westhead treats Beckett’s esteemed text with humorous lightness rather than reverence, joking that he hoped no one had spent more than twenty pounds to see it — they hadn’t. Though clearly enamoured with the production, he still calls it “a bit of tut”: a very Beckettian attitude. There is no grandiosity here, only careful attention to detail.
Before asking their questions, a couple of audience members mention being local, expressing a delighted bemusement at having come to South East London for this one-off performance. Westhead responds by listing a handful of other, equally unexpected and understated locations the production will visit next. Despite Beckett’s status as a revered literary figure, this production maintains his desire for humility.
Directed by Stockard Channing
Published with Everything Theatre
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Twelfth Night
Even in comedies, jokes are often treated as decoration rather than substance – meant to entertain while pointing to deeper themes. But the RSC’s new production of Twelfth Night, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, doesn’t shy away from a focus on fun. Devoting more time to clowning and the comedic subplot – in which Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek trick the uptight Malvolio into believing Olivia loves him – Puwanarajah creates a unique production that draws attention to different types of fools, how they operate, and highlights the tragedy that exists as an equal and opposite force to comedy.
Michael Grady-Hall’s Feste is the likeable, highly trained clown: ridiculous in a polished way, funny through skill and control rather than earnest clumsiness. He sings, juggles, and commands a crowd, performing choreographed routines that are genuinely beautiful. A rope dropped from the ceiling is pulled to black out the stage; in the interval, he throws balls into the audience; and at the end of ‘The Rain It Raineth Every Day’, when he blows out the spotlight, we see the delicate side of the professional fool.
Edward Gorey-inspired design by James Cotterill gives the clowning heightened intricacy. The minimal greyscale lighting opens up the stage, revealing the back curtain, which emphasises the fragility of his body within the huge Barbican Theatre. In mid-air, Grady-Hall skilfully walks the tightrope between safety and disaster.
Samuel West’s incredibly funny Malvolio is the real fool however, and the character who makes us laugh most. His foolishness is raw and untrained, with clumsy physicality and famous yellow stockings. Feste’s ruffled yellow-and-black outfit, complete with banana codpiece, almost looks good compared to Malvolio’s disastrous ensemble. When he appears above the stage, gazing down at Olivia (Freema Agyeman) with wildly misplaced confidence, the audience begins to laugh hard. West’s nasal voice is a perfect comic instrument: his off-beat command of his sounds shines when he studies the forged letter and insists he sees Olivia’s handwriting, her “c’s, her u’s, and her t’s!”.
Music plays a massive part in how we are pulled through the production. An original score by Matt Maltese oscillates between melancholy, soulful tunes and vaudeville-like playful numbers. A vast organ made of oversized pipes looms centrestage, around which the characters whirl like clockwork figures inside a music box, executing slapstick ensemble scenes with orchestral precision.
Joplin Sibtain as Sir Toby Belch and Demetri Goritsas as Sir Andrew Aguecheek form the dynamic duo at the centre of the carousel of foolish side characters. They generate plenty of laughter, but their dominance within the group deepens the audience’s sympathy for Malvolio. Puwanarajah claims that Twelfth Night contains some of Shakespeare’s funniest and saddest moments and here there’s an equally tragic payoff to Malvolio’s hilarious fate: when he is socially ostracised, the moment lands with force, and we feel almost complicit for laughing along.
By focusing strongly on clowning and comedy, the production slightly downplays romantic threads, particularly between Orsino (Daniel Monks) and Viola as Cesario (Gwyneth Keyworth). This shifts emphasis away from jokes where the punchline is subversion of gender roles, which could feel less titillating in our contemporary society where the idea of the feminine encroaching on the masculine is less exhilarating.
Weighting Twelfth Night as Puwanarajah does is a daring move, one that risks making the production appear somewhat superficial. The significance of plot and subplots are almost reversed, yet this choice reveals just how rich the comedic subplot is when given focus. It is not only an entertaining and visually impactful spectacle, but also a worthwhile investigation into where and how fun arises within one of Shakespeare’s most comically charged plays.
Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah
Set and Costume Design by James Cotterill
Lighting design by Zoe Spurr and Bethany Gupwell
Composed by Matt Maltese
Sound Design by George Dennis
Produced by Holly ReissPublished with Everything Theatre
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Josh Jones: I Haven’t Won The Lottery So Here’s Another Tour Show
Josh Jones returns with a new show, I Haven’t Won The Lottery So Here’s Another Tour Show, that plays like a round-the-houses tour of his life, told through a series of joke-embellished stories about his family, dyslexia, Dancing On Ice, his relationship, his hometown and “bumming,” among other things.
The opening is clever: a bit about reading hate comments—not his own, which he says he doesn’t really look at, but those of a comedian he personally can’t stand. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that everyone in the room will have their own opinions about the show, while quietly reassuring us he doesn’t plan to take any of them too seriously, and that he enjoys judging as much as we do. It perfectly matches the slightly unbothered and mischievous attitude that runs through the rest of the hour.
Once the show gets going, the structure is loose—sometimes too loose—and the transitions between stories can feel abrupt. There are genuinely brilliant sections, but they’re interspersed with weaker moments where the energy dips. Jones mainly cycles through three recurring strands: his Manchester upbringing in what he affectionately calls “a scummy family,” his now-comfortable life with his doctor boyfriend, and the odd opportunities that come with being a successful comedian, including a brief stint on Dancing On Ice, where he twisted his ankle in week one but still got a full cheque. These threads are fun individually, but they could be woven into a clearer overall narrative. Doing so would help sustain the show’s momentum and make the hour feel tighter and more satisfying.
There’s even a brief detour into the slave trade, which feels as crazy to describe here as it did when he introduced it onstage. The material is fine, but it only highlights that his strongest work lives in the stories about the people around him. Those scenes are vivid, rowdy, and warm; you can practically see the sitcom version already.
His bit about his mum going to the local travel agent to book a holiday, but instead buying the woman’s dog—meaning she then can’t go on the holiday because she has to look after it—is exactly the kind of chaotic domestic comedy he excels at. Likewise, his grandad insisting he won’t die until he sees Jones marry his boyfriend, followed by Jones imagining the family accusing him of “killing grandad with your gay love!” Jones’s writing is genuinely sharp, full of subtle jokes tucked into the wording—like the idea of “killing” someone with “love”—that elevate the comedy without the audience having to do any extra headwork.
Another standout is his story about desperately wanting a McKenzie coat, only for everyone around him to tell him it was a “gay coat.” The coat takes on a life of its own, transforming from a coat that looks gay into a coat that makes you gay. Much of Jones’s humour comes from that instinctive, ridiculous shouting-match energy of childhood—life throws something absurd at you, so you throw something equally absurd back.
Jones tells us that he doesn’t want to create anything too serious or high-concept—he just wants to tell jokes, but he has some seriously good writing and a clear talent for crafting little comic worlds that could easily be linked together. As of now, he knows how to put on a fun night.
Written by: Josh Jones
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Carl Donnelly: Another Round
With his cap on and two earrings firmly in place, Carl Donnelly takes to the stage with Another Round, his latest hour of laid-back, anecdotal comedy. Last year, he tempted fate with a show about feeling good about going into middle age — and life promptly reminded him of its brutality. This time, he unpacks the fallout with his signature casual charm.
The first section of the show is a flurry of fast-paced, crowd-pleasing material on generational divides, ageing, Instagram vanity, and caveman diets, amongst other things. Its original material delivered in a familiar stylex, and the laughs come thick and fast. Once the audience is nicely warmed up, Donnelly slows the pace and takes us through some longer stories. He shares tales from his travels in India, searching for somewhere to drink, infiltrating a speakeasy in a local man’s house, and managing to bond with the initially suspicious locals over shared admiration for international sports stars — not to mention the joys of his alcoholic advent calendar. In some ways, it’s every man’s dream.
The second half takes a more personal turn, delving into his recent illness — a bout of internal bleeding exacerbated by an evening of taming a raucous cruise ship crowd by downing a queue of pints. Even this grim material is handled with wit and charisma, culminating in a surprisingly funny and heartfelt reflection on his daughter’s brush with bacterial meningitis. He admits that he thought about trying to take these subjects on to produce a heavier, more introspective show about processing this trauma, but fears this could lead to disaster if done wrong. He prefers to treat these subjects as he would any other, showing how lightness and humour can be a remedy for anything, from the frustration of having to endure influencers on Instagram to near death experiences.
The opening section draws in new audience members with broad, accessible observations, but by the end it’s the scatological and the deeply personal that have his core fans roaring. He paints wild, hilarious scenarios, and you believe every word. His go-with-the-flow nature explains how he gets into so much trouble; he’s the sort of man who could probably squeeze in a quick gig after taking his pre-op laxative — if it kicks in on time, that is. No dodgy decision goes unrewarded with a hilarious dose of disaster.
Many stand-up shows hinge on one central theme or concept, but Another Round doesn’t seem to need one. Patterns emerge naturally through Donnelly’s stories, and combined with his relaxed confidence on stage, it feels as though you’ve known him all your life by the end. The title captures the spirit of the evening perfectly: Donnelly’s long-time fans feel like old friends, and newcomers are quickly made to feel part of the gang. It’s as if everyone’s gathered for a few pints and a catch-up, and you leave with the sense that another round, and another hour of stories, isn’t far away.
Written by Carl Donnelly
Published with Everything Theatre
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Michael Rosen: Getting Through It
Michael Rosen’s Getting Through It is a two-part show formed of two stories: The Death of Eddie and Many Kinds of Love. In the first of these, he takes us through the day his son Eddie died in 1999, the moments that followed, the funeral, life after the funeral, and the ongoing present. The second is an account of his 40 days spent in intensive care when he contracted Covid-19 in the early pandemic, a collage of his own descriptions and ‘diary entries’ by hospital staff covering periods of time he is unable to remember.
The show is a masterclass in storytelling — written and performed with such precision and care that the audience hangs on every word. You instantly feel as though you are in the hands of a professional: an experienced writer and an experienced griever. Approaching such immense topics, Rosen is at ease — assured, composed, completely in control. He walks onto the vast stage of the Old Vic, sits at a small chair and table placed at its centre, and holds our attention there for the entire duration of the performance. He needs nothing more than his voice and his words.
In the first story, death seems to happen in a flash. One moment, Eddie is a vibrant young man; the next, we hear the zip of the body bag, and his life is over — or rather, his death happens. Rosen draws a clear distinction that runs through the piece: “Death is biology. Grief is mind.” Together, those two ideas define the experience of loss — the first a medical process, the second a state of being.
He opens with unflinching, clinical detail: the red stripes beneath his son’s armpit where the skin has started to deteriorate, the thin red liquid that seeps from his mouth. The description is matter-of-fact, almost detached, reflecting the numbness of a parent trying to take in the impossible. From there, the mental process of grief unfolds as something continuous, elusive, and ever-shifting. Watching a woman who also lost her child cry at her daughter’s grave, Rosen realises we only ever witness grief in fragments, not in the long, quiet years that follow.
For all its darkness, The Death of Edie is not a heavy story. Rosen brings warmth and humour to the stage; there are moments of laughter and joy throughout. He speaks of Eddie as full of life — a great hockey player, funny, kind, surrounded by people who loved him. He emphasises his physical strength and impressive size, resurrecting his son’s energy and making the audience feel joyful and relaxed, perhaps as Eddie once made him feel.
He connects Eddie to the present wherever possible, recalling that his son once worked in a theatre like this one, ushering audiences just as young staff do tonight. We all passed by that moment on the way in as unremarkable, but now it is charged. The connection between performer, place, and memory becomes palpable — the theatre feels momentarily inhabited by Eddie’s spirit.
The second story, Many Kinds of Love, shifts focus from loss to survival. It explores and magnifies the moment that seemed to pass so quickly and quietly in The Death of Eddie: the dying. In the ‘liminal space’ of the hospital, Rosen confronts the same biological battle with microbes that claimed his son’s life. Once again, we hear startling medical detail — his blood oxygen levels dropping to a life-threatening 58. Yet when recounting his own illness, Rosen is more animated; this time, he is the fighter. His wit becomes a weapon, humour wielded against the pull of death, bolstered by acts of kindness and dedication from medical staff. The optimism that underpins this story reveals a different kind of getting through it — one rooted in endurance, connection, and gratitude. Rosen recognises that recovery, like loss, is more than physical. It depends on levity, on care, on the steady presence of others who hold you up when your own strength falters.
Leaving a show about death, one might expect to feel heavy and sorrowful. Instead, you feel something gentler — a kind of clarity. Rosen transforms personal grief and near-death experience into shared reflection on how life and death intersect and co-exist. Getting Through It is not about moving on, but moving with.
Written by Micheal Rosen
Published with The Reviews Hub
Reposted by Micheal Rosen on X
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Tom Rosenthal: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am
What separates Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am from an average stand-up show is everything that has come before it. Tom Rosenthal’s career as a comic actor hangs over the performance. He knows we know him — but not necessarily for his own stand-up. We arrive with preconceptions: we think something of him before the show, during the show, and, most terrifyingly, after the show.
That sense of caution runs through every moment as Rosenthal tells us about himself — exploring his recent autism diagnosis, his Jewish heritage, his career, his relationship with his famous father, and his status as a so-called “nepo baby.” Threaded through it all is a comparison to Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, who made two great albums he could never quite follow. Rosenthal approaches all of this with a hyper-awareness of the audience’s gaze, as if every confession and every joke is filtered through the question: what do they think of me now?
Many of the jokes come from the tension between wanting to be liked and pretending not to care. Every time he makes a sincere point about creating something beautiful regardless of what people think, he immediately undercuts it with a plea for reassurance — that we like him, that we think he’s funny. Rosenthal anticipates everything we might say about him — the post-show chat, the criticisms — and takes that second-guessing to absurd extremes. At one point, he even invents fake audience members who complain about the show upon leaving the theatre. The bit brilliantly captures how mad you can make yourself by trying to imagine what everyone else thinks of you.
Protecting your reputation is another anxiety Rosenthal shares. He talks about how maybe Alex Turner should have stopped after two great albums rather than risk making anything worse. But you can’t do that. Rosenthal knows it, and the show becomes a kind of acceptance of having to keep putting yourself out there. Despite all his anxiety, there’s something laid-back about the performance. He takes his time to explain his points without worrying about pelting the audience with punchlines — though there are still plenty across the full hour. At one point, he jokes about how exhausting it would be, for us as much as for him, if he were hilarious 100 per cent of the time.
He has the appearance and performance skill of a well-practised actor, but with his slicked-back hair, white shirt and black trousers — echoing Turner’s look — he presents a cartoonishly over-polished figure: an actor who’s had success and now seems oddly removed from the real world, a world he can no longer return to. In a way, the look itself pre-empts how he thinks we will see him — another way of saying, I know what you’re thinking.
Rosenthal always manages to make us feel like we’re in on the joke. Despite the fact that most audience members will never experience what he has, he knows we understand the same paradoxes and fears of being seen. He constantly reassures us that he likes us, calling us his “favourite audience” because we laugh at his favourite jokes — a gesture that lets us know we’re seeing him in the way he wants to be seen.
For all his worry about being judged, he seems finally at ease, figuring it out in real time — and in the process, delivering an hour packed with great jokes.
Written by: Tom Rosenthal
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Alice Cockayne: Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified.
Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified. is wild, grotesque, dark, deep and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Alice Cockayne is a powerhouse, embodying six outrageous female alter egos, each with jobs typically associated with women. Through them, she dives headfirst into female fears and desires, pulling the audience into a world that feels both absurdly exaggerated and disturbingly familiar.
The production itself is super slick and imaginative. Costume changes are covered seamlessly with witty interludes: wigs mounted on the back wall spring to life, performing brief telephone-call sketches that keep the momentum rolling. Even Cockayne’s entrance is striking — beginning in the office of the escort service Girls4U, she puppeteers wigs on Styrofoam heads to represent sex workers, camouflaging her own head among them before revealing herself. This segment offers some of the darkest comedy of the evening, particularly when three men from the audience are pulled up to dance with the wig-puppets. It’s strangely joyful while being brutally honest about the objectification at the core of one of the world’s oldest professions.
Across the show, Cockayne explodes familiar archetypes. There’s a “mother” character, Penelope Pendlewitch, with a false belly and an impossible horde of 556 children – a grotesque magnification of the desire to reproduce. Another character embodies the pursuit of beauty: a long-nailed femme fatale who glides in, chanting, “beautiful lady coming through,” with a softness so exaggerated it’s haunting. Cockayne constantly cuts through these surreal figures with fourth-wall breaks, reminding us, “don’t be scared, it’s just a character.” These moments land hilariously while also probing why a “character” can feel unsettling, as a distorted collection of real human traits expanded to freakish proportions.
Some of the strongest laughs come from the cleaner character Jeanie McNelson, “The Woman with a Broken Neck,” who begins by flicking the lights on and off as if testing the logistics of her cleaning job. She then proceeds to “clean” the audience, joking with one man about his dyed hair: “That’s natural, it won’t wash out, will it?” At this point, the show hits its stride, and every line has the room in stitches.
McNelson also feels like the most true-to-life character, where the surrealism is anchored in something recognisable. It’s when Cockayne’s creations have this kind of grounding that the show is at its funniest. The Cook, too, is a highlight — cobbling together a casserole from bizarre props and breezing past the audience with half-hearted attempts at small talk. She hilariously brushes someone off after asking their star sign: “We definitely won’t get on.” It’s a brilliant imitation of conversation with someone who really doesn’t care about what you have to say.
When the observational edge slips, a few moments don’t quite reach the heights of the show’s best. The Madam of the Girls4U escort agency carries thematic weight, but her characterisation feels thinner than the others. Segments like this would benefit from a sharper script to match the brilliance elsewhere. Still, Cockayne’s whirlwind energy more than makes up for it. Each time a character exits, we can’t wait to see who will storm on next. This is the kind of comedy that feels made for the theatre — exhilarating simply because you’re there in the room with her.
Written by: Alice Cockayne
Directed by: Jonathan Oldfeild
Published with The Reviews Hub
Rosie Wood
Reviews | Opinion | Interviews
Rosie Wood 