Writer: Marigold Lately
Marigold Lately’s Dirty Old Townfor Camden Fringe is an odd little show, part nervous stand-up, part short autobiographical scenes.
She comes on stage complaining about this evening’s problems with the Piccadilly Line, but without finding anything particularly funny to say about it. But if there is an ongoing motif, it seems to be transport. Quite a lot of her short scenes take place on trains. There’s one about getting stuck in a train to Blackpool which gives Lately the chance to show off her skill at a variety of accents, including those of some lairy girls who belt out Dirty Old Town. And there’s quite a funny sequence in a lift at Liverpool Lime Street where she does a nice turn as a Chandleresque gumshoe.
She doesn’t get much mileage out of references to David Cameron’s government and Eton, topics well past their sell-by date. Most of her jokes, however, are self-referential. She talks cheerfully about her shoplifting habits. It’s here that it’s hard to see the divide between comic persona and performer, a division that really needs to be clear when it comes to the show’s dark moments touching on domestic abuse and rape. Was she herself a victim? How are we supposed to react?
Then it’s back to old material about free school milk and a suggestive mime of eating a banana. She has an unappealing tendency to make jokes about old women. Sometimes when a joke doesn’t land, she simply repeats it. In general, Lately positions herself as a good-hearted anarchist, but her rants about excessive supermarket prices (hence the shoplifting) come over as naïve.
There’s some awkward audience participation where we’re invited to make up Dr Who noises (yes, really). Luckily for Lately, there are two eager fans in the front row who are happy to oblige and to roar at her jokes.
The show’s title never comes into focus, nor does an overall shape really appear.
Reviewed on 22 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
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