Added on July 19, 2015 Molly Stewart

Latitude Festival comedy review: Lazy Susan, Double Act

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Sketch comedy duo Lazy Susan’s act is more in the vein of a disjointed narrative play than a straightforward set of sketches.

Celeste Dring and Freya Parker turn out various Australian and up-tempo Matthew McConaughey accents in their bizarre mix of surreal, emotional and playful sketches, bolstered by low-key costume changes and audience asides.

Lazy Susan have established themselves as an act after the hearts of similarly offbeat sketch comedy at the moment; but unlike some of their contemporaries, nothing about this act appears to be weird for being weird’s sake.

This is their second show – Double Act – and their first previewing at Latitude, in the Cabaret tent. This is a perfect setting, and a perfect time slot: lazy early afternoon bumped up by Lazy Susan. Theirs is an absurd act, layered with scatological gags, ‘on-the-nose’ satirical quips and Tracy Beaker-style troubled characters (of the more post-watershed bog off! variety).

Double Act, like their 2014 show Extreme Humans, is gloriously poignant in parts – the story of rekindling a long lost friendship, and the years in between. Kicked off by Dring and Parker as sort of mock, not-quite-television personalities Sheridan and Big T, the next hour housed a catchphrase-keen pair, a chippy, smoking dog dishing out sad-eyed dark Disney advice, a talent show Street Fighter demonstration – HADOUKEN! – and a typically moving, poignant smile-inducing tap dance reunion at the end.

Particularly memorable is Celeste Dring reciting a modified version of Auden’s Funeral Blues following the death of Sheridan and Big T’s mentor and mother, Jacqui: ‘our top bitch, our queen’. As well, Parker’s tailless street dog – with squeaking, cakey voice and a knife – was the kind of cutely dark surrealism that Lazy Susan peddle so well.

It’s the kind of show that deserves a Breakfast Club style end-shot, but the piece of paper with BLACK OUT written on it suffices. Properly brilliant.