Show Rating:

Young Lancastrian Olivia Neville channels the gentle spirit of Joyce Grenfell in her Fringe debut.

Should you need further proof, in the very first sketch she plays a multitasking mother, trying to cope with her unruly, attention-hungry children. ‘Timmy, no, we’re not to do that,’ she admonishes. It’s not exactly a million miles from Grenfell’s famous catchphrase: ‘George, don’t do that.’

Neville is a sweet, versatile performer all right, delicately playing a range of realistic characters from a bored, squashed commuter to a jolly-hockey-sticks adventurer embarking on a dangerous quest to the wilds of… the North of England.

But for all her quietly wonderful thespian talent, she struggles to make her characters funny, rather than simply identifiable. The restful sketches are all over-long, but since the show only comes in at around 40 minutes anyway, there’s not a lot of opportunity for cutting.

One scene, involving a girl working behind the counter of a camera shop, but coming close to breakdown through the stress of it all, is so heart-wrenchingly sad that you couldn’t possibly laugh at her predicament. Neville’s skill in making the character so real has backfired.

The one very funny scene is when she becomes a sloth during a zoo tour, wordlessly hanging off a tree with wide-eyed bemusement. When you can get laughs from doing nothing, that’s a gift.

Neville is almost certainly going places as an actor, as she’s so genuinely warm, but really needs a much more solid script to properly capitalise on that natural ability.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett