Laura Davis: Well Don’t Just Stand There Dancing comedy review – Out-there comedy meets heartfelt tribute
Davis assembles a series of surreal gags, off-the-wall ideas and moments of profundity in her latest hour
People can’t tell if Laura Davis is joking or serious. It’s something of a super-power that the London-based comic claims gives her an edge and, on the evidence of this performance, she might well be right. The Aussie has put together a greatest hits package of some long-cherished couch-potato observations shared with a good friend named Paul, now sadly departed. But there’s precious little sentiment here because Davis is something of a wild-card, with a brand of humour that’s hard to define but easy to like.
A case in point; as she describes it, Davis says she has no great fear of spiders. For £10 she’ll be kind enough to remove such an interloper from your house. Not a great job, but it’s a living of sorts. And obviously she can potentially make more money by putting the same spiders back through the letterboxes of her clients. ‘But not the same ones, so I jiggle the bag around,’ she confesses, with a knowing smile.
That’s a typically acerbic bit of loop-the-loop thinking from Davis, who manages to slip in some genuine profundities amongst the surreal gags without making it seem like a stretch. Whipping herself and the crowd into a rousing finale, Davis clearly isn’t content with presenting a straightforward comedy show, ‘the mediocre three-star review’ that Paul understood was her deepest, darkest fear. Based on her current output, she’s some way from being subjected to that kind of ignominy.
Laura Davis: Well Don’t Just Stand There Dancing, Monkey Barrel, until 27 August, 2.55pm.