Review by Steve Bennett

Even before their Foster’s best newcomer nomination, character/sketch duo Lazy Susan have been winning prodigious acclaim. But although I appreciate the skill, their hour struggled to win me over, despite their best efforts to give many of their broken creations a proper emotional centre.

Each is a nerd or a loser, in with a disconcerting inner sadness, even depression, that they are trying to paper over. The first couple we meet are Viv and Steve, the latter resplendent in double-denim and Sharpie-drawn moustache, who over several scenes reminisce over their awkward, low-key relationship from first meeting to dates at Wacky Warehouse.

Other recurring characters include a couple of spitefully bickering siblings, who slightly call to mind French & Saunders doing Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, a lonely office worker pouring her heart out into her diary of a call (centre) girl, and the gawky teenage outsider with a crush on the damaged goth girl in class.

They all have their own narratives and are well drawn, nuanced characters which Freya Parker and Celeste Dring depict with sensitivity – trying to get under the skin of the oddballs rather than cruelly mocking them. But affectionate character portraits are harder to make funny than over-the-top grotesques, and that’s a conundrum they haven’t quite solved.

Lazy Susan also have some more exaggerated, surreal characters, such as the wacky Jelly Boys, inexplicably chucking the wobbly stuff around. The woman with the most peculiar husband, appearing on a touchy-feely talk show to explain that he’s been charged with a murder he can’t possibly have committed is a highlight of these one-offs, as the internal logic of the set-up is exposed to reality. The most larger-than-life characters in the whole hour are actually depicted as glove puppets, a nice touch but also perhaps a distraction from the fact that the shrill runaway bride is not actually all that well-written.

A brief piss-take of Buzzfeed clickbait and empty-gesture ‘clicktivism’ was spot-on – although as a one-off driven by script not character, it’s almost as if it was parachuted in from a different show altogether.

Lazy Susan have created a menagerie of likeable if sad oddballs in a show that has distinctive atmosphere and rhythms; but would benefit from putting as much emphasis on the funny as the characters.

Review date: 21 Aug 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard