Maggie Service With A Smile - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Maggie Service has had parts in BBC comedies including Hyperdrive and the Omid Djalili Show and, according to her flyer, felt ready to give things a spin on her own. The decision appears to have been premature.

In her debut solo sketch show, she continues to demonstrate her talent for acting but proves incapable of writing a single cliche-free character. At the more favourable end of the scale, we're given an unconscientious medical helpline worker who shrieks with appalled delight at the ailments reported to her, while at the very bottom, there's a narcolepsy sufferers group leader who - you guessed it - keeps falling asleep in her own meetings.

Anyone who is aware of regression therapy probably knows that most participants are curiously revealed to have been someone of note rather than a humble pig farmer - it doesn't need repeating once more with feeling. Ditto the tired Hollywood cliche of unscrupulous men taking advantage of young actresses with stars in their eyes – even if Service's Noo Yoik ingenue is West End musical perfect.

Service's imagination seems to have been further impaired by the performer format. The abundance of characters who are leading seminars, giving a class or talking on the phone rightly suggests someone more familiar with the conventions of theatrical monologue than the more fluid world of sketch.

This might not be an issue were the monologues more engaging. But most raise only smiles at best and are stretched far beyond what they are worth, a problem highlighted by their tendency to lose direction – and they weren't going anywhere much in the first place.  

All in all, it's a peculiar experience. Service really is a very good actor, but she's wasted on her own material.