Brighton Fringe review by Steve Bennett

There’s nothing quite kills a gig like a compere who doesn’t know what they are doing – as Michael James Wright conclusively proved here, falling into the familiar trap of merely conducting a conversation as a substitute for building an atmosphere.

Amid all his ‘so, yeah, uummms’, he engaged in some inconsequential chit-chat to the front row, to the absolute exclusion of the rest of the audience. In fact he took the attention away from the show, so unengaging was his trivial ‘banter’. And the only scraps of material we witnesses were that he has a posh Buckinghamshire accent, despite the dreadlocks. As if he was the first middle-class white guy to go for that hairstyle.

Abruptly, but mercifully, after admitting he hadn’t warmed us up, Wright introduced Vicky, a character in skintight leopardskin mini-dress and liberally applied scarlet lipgloss that gave her a strange, clown-like face. With Katie Price as her role model, her ethos is that to be famous is everything, and between twerking manoeuvres, she talked us through how to achieve that, primarily via breast implants. This has been a familiar stereotype for the best part of a decade, and Vicky – who could be the daughter of Brenda Gilhooly‘s Nineties Page 3 Stunna character Gayle Tuesday – offers little new in ideas, although it is executed with a conviction that certainly entertains.

Mary Feilding could offer something new to comedy – but she has to unlearn everything she is doing. At 64, she’s certainly a demographic away from most stand-up newcomers, but more interestingly, she’s a psychic, palm-reader... and exorcist. This could provide an absolutely fascinating basis for a routine, especially against comedy’s usual rationalist approach, but instead she reels off a highly-rehearsed list of gags with punchlines like ‘I didn’t see that coming...’

Fielding is clearly very new to comedy, and her lack of confidence is almost palpable – but lesson one is to talk with honesty and passion, not just try to hang contrived gags on to the subject matter.

Wayne Lawrence, who put together this show, is also pretty new, but has much less to offer. ‘I told my mum I was doing the Brighton Fringe,’ he tells us. ‘She said, “I don’t think it’ll suit you, why not try a perm?”. Or how about: ‘A bird shat on my sandwich. She was a rugby player’ – that one proving a gateway gag to more putdowns about the fat woman. Comedy like it’s 1975.

Review date: 7 May 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett