one4review | On 22, Aug 2014

I really don’t know what to make of this show. A couple of minutes into her set, Charmian Hughes (very good, as attested elsewhere on this site) asked if ‘Lewis did this to you?’ Yes. He did. I’m not sure what the problem was: it’s far from the least responsive audience I’ve ever been part of, but I’ve never been berated so much in my life. As if it had been decided before we’d even sat down that we’d be a rubbish audience, and so to hell with it.
The show was compere’d by Lewis Schaffer. After some post show research, it seems that his comedy is usually quite a shambles. In this context, a rather unfunny shambles, since I don’t think enough people in this audience knew what they were in for, so ended up somewhere between lost, outraged and slightly offended.
Lynn Ruth Miller’s set (again, getting good reviews elsewhere) was more subtle in its castigation of audience response, merely making us repeat it until we got it right. Charmian Hughes seemed more sympathetic to our plight, though unwilling or wary of giving us a chance to recover and respond. Mike McCabe, while excellent at accents, used them only to mock.
The audience members I could see were smiling (though scant few were laughing), so perhaps this is only a product of my confusion. I’m not sure if it was us, or them, or a combination of both, but this was a rather awkward hour.

Reviewed by Laura

Just theTonic @ The Community Project (Venue 27), 16:15