Miriam Margolyes is as outrageous as ever in her one-woman show, Margolyes & Dickens: More Best Bits says Frankie Reason.
★★★★
She doesn’t feel the need to introduce herself – ‘if you don’t know who I am, what the f**k are you doing here?’ – and she’s entirely justified. The audience cheer their approval and remain fixed to their seats, enthralled.
Margolyes muses on her love for Dickens, her childhood terror of the theatre (which soon turned to joy), and her early critics, whom she dismissed out of hand with the easy confidence of youth.
Dickens, she adds, originally wanted to be an actor, but was too sick to attend his audition at the Drury Lane theatre in 1832, and so turned to writing. A great gift to us all.
Margolyes has an extraordinary command of voice and character, and she is at her best when she is acting out scenes from her favourite novels: Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist.
She is exceptional as the colourful Mrs. Gamp, husky and stiff and preening, and when she finally throws herself into her armchair with an affected gasp, it’s as though the sheer energy she has invested in the character has exhausted her.
Towards the end, the show transitions to Q&A. Margolyes correctly predicts that many of the questions will be about sex – a little disappointing – but she responds eagerly, and engagingly.
Perhaps ever so slightly sanctimonious at times (we seem to arrive at contentious political topics by the most unlikely routes), but genuine, always.
Margolyes and Dickens: More Best Bits runs until 24 August at Pentland Theatre at Pleasance at EICC.
Patrick Monahan is clever, very funny and hugely likeable, says Alister Tenneb.
★★★★★
I’ve seen shows with a fair degree of audience interaction but never the whole show.
But Patrick Monahan in his latest show, The Good, the Pat and the Ugly Excellent, showed a skillful technique of going around the room and loosely labelling audience members and utilising a huge degree of artistic and comedic licence.
No rudeness, no swearing and no vulgarity, no actual tales as such, but he makes it work very well.
A bit unique in that I think he’s the only comedian I’ve seen this year that I would be entirely comfortable taking my two teenage girls along to see and not having them or me die inside from embarrassment.
Don’t let this put you off, he works the room as only a highly skilled and very quick comedian does and once you’re part of the act, you feel part of it, but you are also not dreading the next time he comes back to you as part of his evolving patter.
Brilliant – I loved it. He would be superb as a TV show host and I suspect that’s where we may see him in the future. Completely unscripted, and great clean fun.
His show ran over by a few minutes when he finally got to a scripted joke in the 55th minute – but everyone in the room was delighted and keen for just a bit more. Clever, very funny and hugely likeable.
Patrick Monahan: The Good, the Pat and the Ugly runs until 24 August at Nip at Gilded Balloon Patter House.
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