Review by Steve Bennett

Luke Kempner is a hugely accomplished impressionist, with the technical skill to jump in and out of a huge range of real-life characters in a beat. But, like so many exponents of his craft, the quality of the comedy does not match the quality of the mimicry.

His Edinburgh debut wisely puts all his voices into one long-form narrative to sustain the hour. The idea that Downton Abbey faces a crisis (again) and that the only way for it to be saved is for various members of the Crawley family to take part in reality TV shows in the hope of winning the prizes.

Alert readers may have noticed that Downton is based between 1912 and 1921, when they didn’t have X Factor. And such anachronism is the main joke. If you think that Dame Maggie Smith’s waspish Dowager Countess mentioning such up-to-date things as Twitter, Stella McCartney or Jaegerbombs is inherently hilarious you’ll be in heaven. But there’s no joke behind these buzzwords, just references to things we have now.

Other gags are tiresomely predictable. Americans are stupid; Andy Murray is not being very excited by life; and when there’s some kerfuffle at the house, the question about how it’s going downstairs is answered with: ‘It’s all cleared up; Dr Clarkson gave me some cream.’

I’m probably not this show’s target audience, not being totally up to speed on the ins and outs of the middle-England pop culture Kempner mines. There were certainly particular references to Downton characters that passed me by. But what’s left offers very slim pickings. And I have to assume his impersonations of X-Factor’s Rylan or some bint from The Only Way Is Essex are accurate, as I just don’t know.

Certainly the other voices are uncanny; his Hugh Bonneville being a special gift. And over the course of the hour he admirably takes on some modern figures that haven’t yet attracted the ear of other impressionists, such as Alexander Armstrong and his Pointless sidekick Richard Osman, and Great British Bake-Off’s Paul Hollywood. Although to give you fair warning, there is a ‘baps’ double entendre in this latter strand.

The show is a fine shop window for Kempner’s vocal abilities, and maybe it’ll secure him a decent writer to work with, for at the moment the script is far too simplistic to recommend.

Review date: 15 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett