Definitely on one end of the “straight stand up - WTF” spectrum, welcome to one of the most talked about character comedian shows of the Fringe this year. Emma Sidi - who I’ve long been a fan of thanks to Pls Like - is Sue Gray, chief of staff to Keir Starmer and Partygate investigator. You’d love to be in the room when that idea pops into Sidi’s head - I’d put good money on that being a pub conversation which has got out of hand.
Character acts are an interesting proposition. Not that I’m against them! Can be a big fan! But it’s a tricky balance to strike of how much attention are you paying to writing jokes vs. how much are you just hoping to get laughs through sheer force of personality. I suppose on some level a laugh is a laugh, but I tend to want more substance to just a well-structured persona. The best ones, of course, are both - e.g. Alan Partridge. But when it’s not direct down the middle stand up, it’s harder to corral. Which makes what Sidi’s done here more impressive.
A lot of the show takes place in a funhouse mirror of a world, where Sue Gray is a basic bitch Essex girl working in the civvy serv, who’s impressed by an All Bar One and quite taken with the “dripping in rizz” Starmer. It’s rich in detail and texture and clearly informed. And then. Oh and then. Then there’s the interludes in (as far as I can tell, broadly accurate but obviously intentionally broken so as to be understandable) Spanish about masturbating to Iron Man porn on an iPad when a machete-wielding Dobby breaks into the house to stop her - all still Sue Gray - and the later denouement of that. Absolutely insane and I was howling.
There’s also some pretty much perfect audience interaction in a couple of “coffee breaks” at the water fountain (a literal water fountain on stage), where Sidi drags audience members up for silent, awkward water cooler exchanges. It’s the kind of audience interaction that requires little of its participants, the awkwardness being the point without being undignified.
So to what end, all this, then? Having looked at a few reviews after seeing it, a lot of them seemed to have missed the point, that Sidi does make - to me, at least - quite clear at the end. Sidi - explicitly her out of character - basically breaks the fourth wall to explain that she’s worried that a Starmer government is not going to be all that different from a Sunak government, and how she feels about that. Sometimes that’s easier to express through something ridiculous like office crushes. Sometimes, all this can just be a fun nonsense. Does it have to be either, or can it be both?