Banter Into Bed is an appalling excuse for a comedy as there is a vast lack of humour and a misunderstanding of the word banter. Two members of the audience had the right idea as they awkwardly scuttled out of theSpace on Niddry Street within the first ten minutes of the play. The show is well rehearsed, but unfortunately rehearsals were not time well spent as this show still manages to be perfectly horrendous.Z Theatre Company are a group of drama students from Hull University who enlighten the audience with a tale of a young woman faced with the torment of finding a boyfriend. This simple concept becomes ridiculous as her mother and sister constantly tease her about a non-existent sex life and tell her the only way a woman can have a home after childhood is with her respective partner. Banter Into Bed is supposedly mocking the hype and expectancy of dating at university, but this message is left somewhere in Hull as the show simply comes across as a banter-free disaster without a message in sight. The performers are not awful and some, such as the character of Catherine’s mother, do get a small chuckle from the pained audience. Despite being an all-female cast, except for one, the show does portray male characters; normally this would not be a problem yet the half-hearted attempts at impersonating men are sloppy and uninteresting. Z Theatre Company are a group of young actors who are by no means talentless; they are simply being led in the wrong direction by a script which feeds on stereotypes and predictable jokes. They are committed to the roles and enormous effort has gone into this production, but there is no way that the show, or the pulling technique titled Banter Into Bed, is heading for success.
