By: Leanne Shorley
Reviewer: Simon Topping
This one woman show about intimacy and love, with a side order of sex toys, brings joy and laughter to an enthusiastic audience at the Caxton Arms.
Leanne Shorley is not sure about love. What is love and why is it tricky? Modern dating is hard, rife with pitfalls and disappointments. Her own experiences of love and relationships have often been difficult. In this engaging and funny hour Shorley examines her own life around these issues in an offbeat, brutally honest, yet endearing, way.
Shorley is a commanding presence on stage; both self assured and friendly. Her shotgun delivery is authentically her, both on and off stage, and demands, in a polite way, to be heard.
Firstly she talks of her “love” for her new wand sex toy and the emotional and physical warmth it supplies. She has become fixated and her friends are worried. The wand doesn’t let her down, berate her, gaslight or neg her. It is a simple relationship, which gives her joy.
“What else can give you joy?” She questions the audience. What follows is several minutes of lovely crowd interaction culminating in a clowning piece with a balloon dog. It is fabulously bonkers and received with howls of laughter.
The well honed script is, at times, blurted out as a stream of consciousness, in an off the cuff manner. This is a skillful deception, well executed.
Being a poet you’d expect Shorley to be a good wordsmith and she is. Her poetry is worked naturalistically into the piece so the prose and poetry blend seamlessly as the action continues. There is plenty of adult material shared here by the artist, mostly reference masturbation, which the crowd shriek at, partly in horror, perhaps partly in recognition and mostly due to the funny way it is described and delivered.
The performer is perhaps at her very best when clowning around, dancing to past Coronation Street and pop star, Adam Rickett, doing some yoga or wrestling with her balloon dog as she explores the complexities of her world and the unfortunate embarrassing episodes of her life, which often involve bodily fluids
Nice Things is an inventive comedy offering. There is a very funny poetry scene with the electronic children’s toy “Bop It Extreme” providing the soundtrack, as Shorley expertly plays the game, the clowning and crowd interaction are expertly done and the expanding narrative around Rickett is artfully and funnily returned to as the show goes on.
Above all this is a funny and warm piece of comedy that has the room laughing throughout and leaves them wanting more.
Reviews on 15th May. Runs to 16th May.
