Nina Conti: Dolly Mixtures (4*)

Ian’s review…

Nina Conti is another of our fringe favourites.  She has a lovely presence on stage and is a brilliant comic ventriloquist (in the interest of honesty I have to admit I fancy her quite a lot too!).

This year’s show uses a collection of characters, some new, some old.  Monkey remains one of my favourites, and I am still in awe of how Nina and Monkey can have such completely different personalities and compelling conversations – it’s seriously impressive and very funny.  Some of the new characters worked better than others for me, but that’s to be expected for a preview and overall it was very good.  I loved Young Nina, but for me it was a dog that stole the show – I won’t reveal more but the group I went with keep find ourselves inserting his catchphrases into conversation in the pub and rolling around with laughter at the memory.

This is an easy 4* and I suspect if I’d seen it later in the run when the new characters have bedded in just a little more it might have managed 4.5.  VERY highly recommended.

Ruth’s review…

Ah we love Nina Conti, we’ve been going to see her ventriloquist act for about ten years. She’s the most lovely yummy mummy type but her characters have very filthy mouths. You need to see it to understand fully how well she pulls that off. Monkey was her original character and still my favourite, and in some ways it is a shame to give the time over to new characters but we did enjoy Killer the dog and young Nina a lot too.