Posted: April 28, 2010
I see a lot of live comedy. In fact that’s an understatement. I live, breathe, eat comedy. I watch it online; I got to gigs above pubs, comedy awards shows, stadium gigs, live at the Apollo, everything. But my favourite type of comedy has to be character comedy (I’m a massive fan of Steve Coogan, Kevin Bishop etc) so I’m always interested to see new character acts on the circuit.
I first saw the diminutive Susan Harrison in “Five Characters in Search of Susan"a character comedy show in which she wrote and played five contrasting characters. While the show wasn’t perfect (there wasn’t really a strong enough device stringing the characters together for my liking) it was a great showcase for Harrison and showed off her potential as a character comic. From what I have seen she is a very physical performer and I like the way she throws herself in to all the different roles she plays. As a hardcore, geeky comedy fan I go to loads of gigs in London and I’ve since seen her doing a short slot at a gig as one of her characters, Shakira. As Shakira she had some great lines and although at times I felt that she could do with relaxing a bit in her audience participation, again there was a huge amount of potential there and her set went down really well. I’ve also seen her YouTube videos as Jennie Benton Smith (which she has also done on the circuit) and this is a character who works well in front of a live audience as well as on video. In particular her pastiche of the infamous Kersal Massive YouTube clip is a real treat and worth checking out. Susan was a Semi Finalist in last year’s Funny Women Awards as Shakira and I think it’s a character that could definitely develop in to a longer set. I’ll definitely watch out for Susan on the circuit.
Category: General |