Frankie Thompson: Horrible Things comedy review – A vortex of weirdness
The comedian’s gloriously weird clown show finds comedy in male narcissism, political nastiness and the horrors of the internet
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Swirling around the stage in a polka-dot flamenco dress, it’s Frankie Thompson’s face that you can’t stop looking at. It appears to be moulded from plasticine: stretching, squashing and rearranging itself with alarming speed, this is a performer who can communicate an entire joke with a raised eyebrow. In Horrible Things, Thompson deploys her wiggly face wonderfully, alongside avant-garde clowning, internetty little jingles and a disgusting foray into the mind of a nine-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The show is a mix of sketch comedy, songs and PowerPoint presentations, all relying heavily on Thompson’s impressive ability to lip-sync herself (and her audience) into another dimension. And the horrible things? Men, duh. Recordings of Tory whips gossiping are genuinely hard to listen to, while a Sinatra concept album provides an unlikely exploration of male narcissism. The political stuff is packed with gags (and not just the joke variety) as Thompson spews out vile impression after vile impression.
The men she selects from the audience are duly humiliated. One volunteer becomes the star of her ‘baby boy’ routine and, as he is dragged around the stage, you genuinely wonder if he is a plant. His daft expression so perfectly illustrates the theme of the show. But it’s Thompson’s clever direction and vision that means she somehow finds the perfect man for the job every night. The whole experience feels like being lost in a vortex of YouTube and Reddit: clever, weird and dripping with a gross-but-can’t-look-away feeling. And in this world, the gap between horrible and hilarious is very small indeed.
Frankie Thompson: Horrible Things, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 August, 8.45pm; picture: Holly Revell.