Lucy Porter's Love In

Note: This review is from 2007

Review by Steve Bennett

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

Review date: 1 Jan 2007
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

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