Brighton Fringe review by Steve Bennett

So this is rather weird. Alex Lacey’s show – very ambitiously described in a wordy subtitle as a ‘play’ – ultimately shows of her talents in audience-wrangling, but the mechanism is a more than little odd.

She sets herself up as a stalker, an easy and over-familiar comedy archetype if ever there was one, with most of the predictable gags coming from mentioning restraining orders or being led away by security.

Her fantasy love life comprises her imagined relationships with Hollywood stars and popular comedians like Tim Minchin or Stewart Lee – all of which amount to nothing more than a crudely Photoshopped image on the screen behind her. She offers few jokes here, just a re-statement of what a proto-bunny-boiler she is, as the image-manipulation software positions her near the stars.

The true object of her affections, however, is James Walmsley – the tousle-haired and very handsome lead singer of now-defunct comedy rock band Dead Cat Bounce. That she’s chosen a real, non-famous, person to be the object of her very obvious desires is the strange decision… but maybe this how really is what it pretends to be: a cry for him to notice her so they can meet, fall in love and live happily ever after.

In faked improvised sequences, owl-loving Lacey imagines going on various dates with him, the DCB heart-throb being played by audience members behind a crude cardboard masks of his face. She incompetently flirts with these various incarnations of him until, in the upbeat final scene, she has a fake marriage, recruiting half the audience to be her wedding party; leaving the rest to throw confetti.

After a lot of mucking about, dependent far more on her likeable personality than any actual jokes, this finale is fun, getting everyone to invest in their own good time. And who doesn’t love a happy ending?

But the buildup to this point seems like a lot of padding, even if the audience enjoy the good nature of it all – which is rather counterintuitive if Lacey is supposed to be an intense borderline psycho.

In the end, it’s a entertaining distraction, even if there are far more rewarding ways to spend an hour out there.

Review date: 11 May 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett