Show Details
Lucy Porter's Love In
Show type: Edinburgh Fringe 2007
Starring Comic:
Lucy Porter

Lucy Porter's Love In


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Description

Self-confessed love addict Lucy is going cold turkey just long enough to try and wrest control of her life back from her misty-eyed impulses. The Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Johnson describes romantic love as ‘the single greatest energy system in the Western psyche’, but is the quest to find ‘the one’ really the greatest goal we can aspire to?

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Reviews

Original Review:

Show Rating:Lucy Porter's Love In rated 3/5

Lucy Porter is this year offering some cynical, hard-edged satire that brutally challenges every audience member to confront their own complacency.

No, not really. She’s got a charming, sweet-natured, upbeat hour about love and its pursuit, full of agreeably self-deprecating anecdotes and easy banter.

She radiates likeability, instantly befriending the entire audience. It’s hard to believe such an attractive, witty and sociable girl would ever have trouble finding love, but so it seems.

Dating disasters are always a comic staple – it’s hard to imagine many sitcoms without them – and Porter has had her fair share. She could be a Friends character, a successful woman who turns into a flustered, gibbering fool whenever a potential boyfriend looms. Although, in the sense of balance, it’s sometimes the male who is bonkers, as her date with a City banker attests.

She openly shares these encounters with the audience, and you do feel her nerves, embarrassment or affront, so easy is she to empathise with, and so breezy is her retelling.

There’s not much more to the hour than some charming, if inconsequential, tales from the dating frontline, whether it be cyber-stalking or showing up to dates in inappropriately kinky outfits.

Porter sometimes tries to make grand philosophies out of these individual instances, but not very convincingly. She has got a decent stock of good lines to draw out the comedy from her anecdotes – although often the best gags have nothing to do with the love theme; a silly routine about her bank password, for instance.

Even though she’s happy to poke fun at romantic endeavours, especially her own, there is a soppy undercurrent to the show, just to add to the general loveliness of proceedings.

Whatever her one-on-one failings, Porter can make a whole room fall a little bit in love with her; but could still do with a bit more substantial material to go with that warm feeling.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

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Comments

This is the third year in a row I've seen Lucy and the best yet. The show revolves around the view that being in love is like having a psychiatric disorder and right from the start pulls you in. The story is told via a series of anecdotes which works very well. However she then gets the audience to vote on whether the outcome was right or not which is a nice idea but halts the flow. Each time it happens she has to get the audience back up to speed. Having said that her style and delivery is as loveable as ever and the jokes are definitely funny. 4 out of 5

Andy Barr, August 2007



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