Fringe Comedy
Lorraine Wilson
Royal Vauxhall
Underbelly Med Quad
FOUR STARS
Oliver Reed: Wild Thing
Gilded Balloon Teviot
FIVE STARS
Lewis Macleod is not Himself
Frankenstein Pub
FOUR STARS
IF IT hadn’t been for Cleo Rocos, friend and co-star of Kenny Everett, we might never have known that he and Freddie Mercury smuggled Princess Diana into the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, disguised in drag.
That night in 1988 is imagined here, but the source of the tale, who was also there, isn’t placed at the scene. Perhaps the comedy rule of three worked out better for the purposes of this heartfelt and, at times, ribald musical theatre comedy.
Creating three of Britain’s most beloved faces, then creating a dynamic between them, is
Matthew Jones creates a lifelike Everett, alternating between public showman and private man crippled by fear that his career will be over after being outed.
Tom Giles has the most difficult role, in musical terms at least. We know how Mercury sang and to hear a musical theatre voice, as impressive as it is, come from a man in one of Mercury’s iconic get-ups is slightly disconcerting. His touching performance also deserves a better wig.
Diana gets a feisty reading by Sarah-Louise Young. No shy Di here. Young gives us a woman looking for fun and affection, hacking at the shackles of what we know was a loveless marriage.
Runs until August 29
OLIVER Reed succumbed to his years of what was generally described as hell-raising at a bar in Malta in 1999, while filming what should have been a comeback role in Gladiator.
Here Rob Crouch inhabits rather than impersonates Reed. A sonorous voice booms from his impressive frame, and through nothing more than facial hair and spectacles, he creates a startling physical resemblance.
This is a breakneck life story, from Reed’s days as an impressive schoolboy athlete to something of a lost soul before receiving the parts in Hammer films that led to his breakthrough as Bill Sykes in Oliver!
Of course the acting achievements are important, but looking back on his life we see how his lifelong inability to conform was exacerbated by his appetite for alcohol.
There’s no examination of whether this was something of a tragedy. All it takes is the reminders of grim chat show appearances that became his trademark – the gurning drunk rather than the brooding leading man.
A group in the same row asked if I knew who this was, having just bought tickets in something of an inebriated state and thinking it was a wild late-night stand up show. No doubt Oliver would have said “cheers” to that.
Runs until August 29
PERHAPS more than any other comedy actor working today, Lewis Macleod’s voice is his fortune - now that Matt Berry is also a well-known face anyway.
He’s not only one of the country’s most gifted mimics, but a flexible voice that commands and persuades us where we should buy our carpets. It can be difficult to fill the best part of an hour with mimicry, but Macleod has put together a show to showcase his talent as a stand-up as well as someone who can slip easily from Liam Neeson to Alan Carr to Ian McKellen to a supreme personification of Donald Trump.
He lets us see behind the scenes of working as a voice actor, how he works with Hollywood studios to overdub voices of actors, and concludes the show with a reading of Little Red Riding Hood, which certainly shows skill but becomes slightly too long for a simple cavalcade of impersonation.
Mimicry is as much about observation as having a limber larynx, and here Macleod shows why it would be good to see, as well as hear, more of him.
Runs until August 21
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