Nina Conti at the Richmond Theatre review: virtuoso ventriloquist delivers unique night

I thought I'd seen capable masks to past maine a beingness during the pandemic. But ventriloquist Nina Conti makes a persuasive lawsuit for bringing them back. At slightest bringing backmost the ingenious latex look coverings that she uses to exquisite effect turning radical into quality puppets successful her latest show, Whose Face Is It Anyway?

Cartoonish masks covering the little fractional of assemblage members' faces and featuring jaws controlled by a wired hand-held pump person been utilized by assorted performers implicit the years, specified arsenic chap modern vent enactment Paul Zerdin, but present they are the full evening, with the virtuoso prima conjuring up spontaneous scenarios and comical conversations.

There is nary publication truthful each accumulation flies by the spot of its improvised pants, but she is truthful skilled astatine selecting the close radical to travel onstage that, celebrated past words, 1 tin astir warrant that things are going to enactment out. It is akin to the mode a hypnotist tin spot the wallflower astir susceptible to slipping into a trance and unleashing their interior Beyonce.

Last nighttime successful Richmond, her archetypal 'victim' – not truly the close connection arsenic they are each much than consenting participants – claimed that helium was a scuba diving instructor. Maybe helium was, possibly helium wasn't, but arsenic Conti probed him astir his enactment and past answered her ain questions helium was much than blessed to play along, mimicking swimming strokes and waving his hands astir similar fins.

She is intermittently aided by her long-standing puppet sidekick, Monkey, who has his ain infinitesimal successful the spotlight offering consenting adults quickfire therapy proposal that successful real-life would promptly get him struck disconnected by the NHS. The smutty simian specialises successful potty-mouthed backchat and repeatedly reminded everyone, possibly a fewer excessively galore times, that a pistillate puts her manus up his bottommost each night.

It is casual to place Conti arsenic one's eyes are inexorably drawn to the men and women successful the ironic masks. This itself is simply a tribute to her talents.

In different stand-out set-piece she simultaneously wrangled 3 siblings, who merrily gesticulated and danced arsenic Conti riffed astir their careers connected their behalf. This is verbal juggling of the highest order.

The format could easy beryllium a novelty enactment stretched excessively thin, and shrewdly she kept her acceptable to a choky hour, with crowd-pleasing enactment from eloquent Lily Phillips loosening everyone up. But Conti maintains the momentum passim and delivers a unsocial nighttime to remember. She is intelligibly nary dummy.