Review from the London Clown Festival

Lawrence Dodd bursts on to the Soho stage aping the swagger of the most persuasive hype man, promising that this is going to be the most special, deep and empowering show of your goddam life. The bluster comes from a charismatic, commanding creator of chaos who offers the promise of a freeflowing ‘anything could happen’ show. Yet not far beneath that armour we also catch glimpses of a vulnerable man a lot less certain of himself.

The performer’s thinly-disguised desperation to create a unique work of meaning is the foundation of This Can’t Be It – nothing less than the audience experiencing a near-religious epiphany will do to convince our performer’s fragile ego that he is talented and worthy. When he spots Chortle in the crowd, he offers to do anything for a good review, dancing like Alan Partridge danced for BBC executive Tony Hayers, and saying the quiet bit out loud: ‘I need this!’

In that spirit, he throws all he’s got at pulling off a shamanic performance, aimed at binding the room as a community and, ideally, instigating a collective psychological shift through his movement, music, call-and-response chanting, new-age aphorisms, and stream-of-consciousness commentary on the world and the room. Physicality is a big part of this show, from clambering through the seating to tribal dancing on stage, and other moments more subtle. Elsewhere, he’ll throw normal intonation out the window to stoke the weirdness, but made safe by his vulnerability.

Largely improvised – if underpinned by a definite structure – Dodd’s unpredictability is exciting, and his aims worthy as he tries to create a haven of nonjudgmental freedom in this room away from the angry world outside, of which we get occasional samples when he opens a curtain or a door. The nature of this mercurial beast means the comedy elements aren’t consistent, and he sometimes tries too hard (even given that is a trait baked into the premise), but as an audience member you must submit to those inevitabilities. 

He can’t keep the intensity high forever, and in a tonal pivot he switches to a quieter, more reflective scene set in a sauna as he realises he cannot impose meaning on to us. Building connections with the audience IS the profundity he seeks, he realises.

Here, Dodd strips to his orange bikini briefs – would it be a proper London Clown Festival show if we didn’t get a lot of exposed flesh? – and we meet an older, overfriendly Yorkshireman keen to chat to the audience before offering a reverie about making one’s peace with the world.

It’s over-long, this, compared to the insane but unsustainable energy of the first half, but Dodd nonetheless holds the audience to the extent he gets a standing ovation at the end. 

Outside of the pacing, the comic’s instincts are otherwise largely spot on – he knows when to be intense, when to back off, when to let the persona crack enough to acknowledge the stupidity of the endeavour. The spontaneity is certainly appealing, yet with obvious guardrails to ensure we feel in safe hands. With some levels of ambiguity at the show’s heart, it’s hard to make the messages fully gel, but the efforts are both fascinating and funny.

• Lawrence Dodd: This Can't Be It is back at Soho Theatre on July 1 and at the Gilded Balloon Teviot throughout the Edinburgh Fringe.

Review date: 5 Jun 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Soho Theatre