Of all the things on the calendar for this Fringe, this is the one I think I know the least about going into it. My friend Bethan is a very good rising comic, who has a deceptively insane comedic mindset, and all I know really is that she’s written a play of sorts and it promises to be carnage. And oh it is.
There are an enjoyable number of baffling layers to this. One is that this group of people weren’t able to book any of the rooms in their local parish meeting for a zumba class, and so had to turn to the easier option of a Fringe venue. Then there’s the layer of the Love Actually parody that they have to perform once they realise an audience has turned up. It all makes an intuitive sense moment to moment, but my word if you step back and think about it for a second, you’re a braver man than I.
The two parts to the equation of a show like this is material and delivery. Let’s start with delivery. The cast have full throted commitment to the bit here, and honestly, that sells it. There are dance routines, for christ’s sake. There are bounds of energy that are tinged with nerves but mostly just belief, and that works.
The material, yes, insane. There are some tightly written set pieces, especially when most directly taking on some of Love Actually’s more specific scenes (although, interestingly, maybe the most famous scenes in that film are absent here, such as the dancing PM and the creepy cue cards), but also just some excellent attention to detail - Emma Thompson’s character loving Bruno Mars instead of Joni Mitchell. The outer layer is a bit more dependent on bravado to get through it, but that’s no bad thing. It’s good fun!
It’s nice to see it on its first sold out show of the run, with an audience that are getting on board (and half of whom look like they could have been in Black Country New Road at some point and no one would know). The fact that George was enjoying himself throughout and afterwards admitted to us that he’d never seen Love Actually is testament to something - I just don’t whether it’s about the show or about George.