Review by Paul Fleckney

There’s a fair amount of snobbery around impressions in comedy; they’re seen as gimmicky and old-fashioned. An easy laugh. Most younger comics wouldn’t go anywhere near them, but Luke Kempner has built up quite a following with his impressions-based show The Only Way is Downton, and the ITV2 work that followed it.

Now he’s back at the Fringe with Judi Dench Broke My Heart – the story of how his wedding to Dench is interrupted by a series of scandalous allegations about her behaviour with various men in the light entertainment industry.

Where Kempner really gets it right is that he does it all with a knowing wink – none of that 'I wonder what… Tony Blair would have made of this...' Instead, he flagrantly crowbars a bunch of famous people into his mini play, ensuring he gets his best impressions in while oiling the wheels with a bit of boy-next-door charm.

There’s a lot of high culture v low culture going on. For every Dench there’s a Tom Daley, every Bradley Walsh an Ian McKellen, and that dynamic even plays out in the jokes (Dench appearing on an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show, for instance). As ever with impressions-based shows, a few unusual choices go a long way, and Kempner’s Tim Lovejoy, Louis Theroux and Frankie Boyle served that purpose well.

Kempner has background in musical theatre – or 'opera gay shit' as the bullies at school called it, he tells us – so there are some musical numbers too. Again, though, he is smart enough to make these a slightly ironic entry into the show. Come the finale he dispenses with the irony, though – it comes across as a kind of 'sod it, why not?' – and gives himself a huge finish that ends the show with a bang. It papers over the fact that it was simmering along nicely and not an awful lot more.

There are some passable gags if no zingers, the comic value coming mostly in his portrayals of the celebrities and the situations he puts them in (Andy Murray insisting on cracking gags was a nice idea). It’s very, very mainstream, and about as groundbreaking as my home-made lasagne, but it is well done.

Review date: 18 Aug 2016
Reviewed by: Paul Fleckney
Reviewed at: Pleasance Dome