A sign for the Walton Street Working Men’s Club hangs on one wall, on the other a set of gold and pink lametta streamers. Between them, literally and metaphorically, stands Lucy Beaumont, a comedian from seemingly the most unlikely of places: Hull.
Beaumont is a particularly likeable performer. Her tone is one of blissful naiveté with a hint of ditzy
Despite the title, there’s no twerking in Beaumont’s debut Fringe show. There’s quite a bit of Miley Cyrus, for no good reason, but it’s a pity that a pun that ‘good’ is left out of her set, especially when a couple of gags seem quite ropey. The show is instead a wandering through the love life of one of Beaumont’s friends. I say ‘wandering,’ because this structure isn’t very tight and the digressions are not well managed; every return to “my friend Jackie” feels like a particularly hard wrench on the steering of the show.
However, Beaumont is a particularly likeable performer. Her tone is one of blissful naiveté with a hint of ditzy – she switches between scatterbrained idiocy and sharp observation many times throughout her hour. She’s as much laughed at as laughed with, but she’s obviously planned it that way. Unfortunately, a lot of the laughter is muted; it’s a low energy set and could use a bit more in the way of warm up at the start to allow for Beaumont’s rather lovely bits of audience interaction.
Her biggest laughs come when she draws on the North/South divide, though it’s not mentioned by name – she plays up class and geographical stereotypes with aplomb, even if it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. If the jokes are a bit predictable, Beaumont’s guileless demeanour lets her get away with it.
About twenty minutes into the set, a man behind me in the audience murmured “Aw, how sweet.” It’s a fitting summary for an hour of comedy that’s more cute than cutting.
