Review by Steve Bennett

Best newcomer nominee Cariad Lloyd has clearly put a lot of detailed work into her one-woman character show. Her creations are fully-formed and utterly convincing, and some niftily impressive lines emerge naturally from their only slightly exaggerated personality flaws.

There’s often a payoff between credibility and funny in character sketches, and Lloyd perhaps leans too far towards the former. However, the three-dimensional nature of her alter-egos – and her strong natural talent – mean she’s able to improvise without breaking the mask, which adds an impressive extra dimension. A running joke in today’s show about a bearded punter she dubs Jesus proves particularly fruitful.

Her weakest persona is … well, herself. Introducing herself as an out-of-work actress prompts a long pre-amble about the easily-mocked pretension of the thespian world, in which she never seems entirely comfortable.

She is much more at home as a seven-year-old boy, one of the stand-outs of the show. He’s a budding stand-up, having learned all the tricks from Michael McIntyre, delivering a lecture on the Russian revolution, in which he might just have got one or two facts muddled. And there’s no PowerPoint, either – this is the Free Fringe, after all – but hand-made A4 collages, displayed in a folder.

Another strong creation is ‘Cockerney’ Sam, a classic jolly East End ruffian, who likes nothing better than getting round the old Joanna for knees-up songs about appalling rapes and hideous murder. It’s a menacingly unsettling character – the blood-soaked butcher’s apron helps – with a nice line in dark humour.

An aura-reading hippy seems a more boilerplate character, although the naivety about what’s really going on with her guru sparks some nice lines, and the magician’s daughter stepping in for her mother, the usual assistant, never really sparkles, despite the daddy issues she displays. In Jacques Le Coq, Lloyd takes the usual cocky urban yoof stereotype but gives it several twists by making him French and a free runner as well as a wannabe gangsta rapper.

Lloyd has great warmth as a performer, making all the characters endearing – yes, even the murderous Cockney rapist – despite their flaws. Showcase such as this are often thinly-disguised acting audition pieces, and on that count Lloyd proves her skills without question – but she has also gone further and shown a real understanding of complex comic creations. A strong debut indeed.

Review date: 26 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett