Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

After building up her cult audience to the point that her last show – as the male ‘douchebag’ Nate made it to Netflix – outrageous Los Angeles clown Natalie Palamides has been given a much bigger playground this year.

And her excess has absolutely grown to fill the space the Traverse offers. Bigger props, bigger set pieces, an ever bigger performance than before. all in the service of a ridiculously over-the-top tragic romance.

This is the story of Mark and Christina, both played by the 34-year-old in a series of costumes split down the middle: facing one way she’s the man, the other she’s the woman. You’ll have probably seen mimes doing a similar trick, but it’s really nothing like this, and the skill with which she can keep both characters going, especially through some of the more complex and maniacally paced scenes, is impressive. 

We first meet our star-crossed lovers as their toxic relationship falls apart at a Y2K New Year’s Eve party in a remote woodland cabin, with Christina confronting her partner over his wandering eye, gaslighting and all-round shittiness. She storms out, triggering a flashback through the pivotal moments of their lust-fuelled three-year romance, starting with their meet cute, running into each other as they dashed through a city street, papers and coffee flying everywhere.

The sexual attraction is palpable, even though she’s already in another relationship, and so the lies and the emotional torment are there from the start. We also learn that Mark has a famous grandfather whose speech impediment gives the show its title.

They dance and drink and screw in a show as torrid as their relationship, raucous, raunchy, sordid and messy, often all at the same time. Palamides has huge reserves of demented energy, dashing around the stage, and the auditorium, throwing herself into 75 minutes (and the rest, she over-ran massively) of physical and prop comedy that requires her utter commitment.

Yet she wears those demands lightly. She’s always in the moment, keeping the show loose to accommodate what’s going on in the room, mostly at her own instigation. Audience members are roped in to help out with a few supporting characters – including Times critic Dominic Maxwell on opening night, who performed sterlingly as the other man in this love triangle – and we all feel drawn into the chaotic story.

Nightclubs, car crashes, and an insanely bloody climax that offers a Tarantinoesque parody of the ‘fooled you, I’m not dead at all!’ denouement of Romeo And Juliet, magnified a hundredfold, all go into this show of unbridled excess.

Unlike Palamides’ previous offerings, Weer has no ambition to convey any greater point than creating pure havoc. The characterisations are only deep enough to make the wild slapstick work – but it takes a rare talent to unleash such visceral chaos and keep everyone on board. Palamides is that talent.

Review date: 9 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Traverse Theatre