Laura Levites: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Alternative Fringe @ The Hive

‘I’m American,’ Laura Levites says, redundantly, at the top of the show. After all, she’s perky, enthusiastic and with a compulsion to share some of her more intimate confessions with strangers. But she realises her nationality is not always popular over here; Yank-bashing is an ‘acceptable form of racism’ in her terms.

After crashing through stereotypes such as these by way of icebreaker, she starts gushing about how she likes British men… but not for any awkward Hugh Granty emotional repression – but because this Jewish redhead loves an uncircumcised cock. Indeed she waxes lyrical on the subject, blasting through fairly uninteresting comments, significant only for their crass value, through chutzpah and enthusiastic smiles. You have to admire her honesty, even if this – and her description of her rape fantasies – might fall into the ‘too much information’ category.

The crux of the story is how she fell for a British bloke, and set up home with him in London. There are problems with immigration, problems with the Los Angeles home she left in the care of a Central Casting lesbian, and eventually problems with the relationship itself thanks to a spontaneous lack of attraction.

It’s a packed narrative, and where some comics inflate the most trivial of instances into a routine, she has loads to tell. In fact, that’s one problem – because her life is so much raw material, this seems like a series of incidences  straightforwardly told, without employing many storytelling devices to add drama or emotion. We don’t get to feel what she felt, we’re just told about it.

Oftentimes she overlooks jokes, too – though she’s got a small handful of great ones that suggests they are within  her grasp, but largely she powers through via force of personality rather than any great writing, very much in the style of her compatriot, Ruby Wax.

Levites has some cross-cultural insight that goes beyond the ‘you say tomayto’ territory that are probably worth exploring more. But then she’s also got some George W Bush gags, too. It’s a mixed bag that holds together around the framework of her life story, but never really feels particularly interesting or hilarious, no matter how lively or enthusiastic a host she makes.