Andrew Lawrence, winner of the BBC New Act of the Year 2004, is at the Pleasance with his first solo show, How to Butcher Your Loved Ones.
If the title makes the show sounds disturbing, well, that's because it is disturbing. Lawrence plays on his unusual looks to create an almost demonic persona, a little boy once scorned who will neither forgive nor forget, a sort of one man League of Gentlemen. If you've caught him before in one of the short showcases he's done in the last couple of years, you'll recognise the storytelling-through-song style. And yes, those songs still do deal with subjects like eating his mother ('she made a nice lasagne').
But what's changed and bloomed since then is Lawrence's engagement with the audience. In the extremely intimate Pleasance Hut or Pleasance Skip as Lawrence calls it he works the audience, appointing one man as the audience adjudicator and another the ombudsman, to check the show's progress. Unsurprisingly by the end of the show both are awarding him 10/10.
Lawrence's extremely dark take on life won't be to everyone's taste. But he is undoubtedly one of the most original comedy voices to emerge in recent years. He predicts his own career peak in 2009, so see him now and be 3 years ahead of the crowd.
