Caroline Hardie brings a diverse range of characters to her latest show. Emma McAlpine reviews.
For this year's show, sketch double act Thomas Hardie have temporarily scaled down to a one (wo)man band, after Joy Thomas had a baby. For 2012, her comedy partner Caroline Hardie has devised a show about characters she’s ‘met and endured’ over the years. “And some of them are right bastards,” she warns us.
There are people Hardie has personally encountered, like a monotonous museum tour guide with a hunchback; a sort of grotesque hybrid of Quasimodo and Ferris Bueller’s economics teacher. She also introduces us to Fiona, a wobbly-lipped posh girl who teaches us ‘How To Make Love Last Forever’ while trotting around the room dressed like a jockey; and an East London hipster with some strict style rules: “If you can put your clothes in a basket, it’s not fashion.”
Then there are the public figures you may or may not recognise, like a gruff Cockney version of her Royal Maj, Elizabeth II, who gives us fellow monarchs a master class on ‘How to Be Royal’. There’s a funny impression of publicity-mad ‘fitty’ Louise Mensch and a song and dance finale which sees Angela Merkel take on the Chicago song ‘When You’re Good to Mama’ with amusing results.
The disappearance of her comedy partner certainly hasn’t affected Hardie’s confidence and exuberant charm on stage. She ties the sketches together nicely, introducing each character with some playful background. A few, like the rapey Dominque Strauss-Kahn, are flimsier than others and some are perhaps flogged a bit too hard, like our American tour guide whose nasal lines really start to grate by her third appearance, but the stronger characters help to steady the balance.
Overall, this is a fun and enjoyably silly show. When merely donning a riding hat and trotting around the stage can have the room in stitches, you can rest assured you’re doing something right.
Thomas Hardie presents Where is Thomas, Hardie? is at the Pleasance Theatre until Wednesday 31st October, at 8pm.
See more Fringe shows in London.
Add an event
Scoping Out London’s Coolest Historic Bingo Halls
London’s bingo halls were once a bustling part of many of the city’s communities, but as...