Presented by Country Mile Productions

Review by Harri Dimdore-Miles

Below at Pleasance Courtyard

Jonathon Oldfield debuts ‘Exquisite Corpse’, his new hour of absurd character comedy. This Co-creator and star of Radio 4’s outrageously funny ‘Time of the Week’ brings the same bizarre creativity to his Fringe show this year. In ‘Exquisite Corpse’ Oldfield divides his time between his own eccentric characters and ones inspired by the audience playing the classic childhood game where you combine drawings of different body sections to make one mismatched character.

Oldfield is a fast-moving ball of comedy and theatrical energy. He adopts the stage with ease – in moments between characters he holds the audience with crazed eyes, big grins and a generally amusing demeanour. The audience are charmed by the puppy like joy and chaos that says, ‘This is my debut!’ in the best way possible. In many ways Oldfield is an old-school comedian, using thick and fast world play and electric physical gags. Expert timing, charismatic transitions and clever call-backs result in a sharply produced example of how to make one man character comedy work for an hour.

Oldfield’s characters are ridiculous, a healthy mix of perfectly realised cliches and genuine original creations. Some highlights were the gentle Welshman who after a recent breakup runs the garden allotment and for some unknown but brilliant reason periodically rolls his hips around sensually to a saxophone beat. In this way Oldfield succeeds not only with verbal humour but with well-done musical and physical comedy. More archetype characters like the bumbling Hugh grant who interrupts a wedding in his dressing gown to earnestly confess his incestual feelings for the bride, also work fantastically.

‘Exquisite corpse’ is an excellent name for a show and using the game exquisite corpse is an original and highly inventive premise for a character comedy set. It was then a little disappointing that this was a slightly underdeveloped side element of the performance. Whilst Oldfield was still naturally humorous in his slightly half-hearted attempts to summon characters on the spot, there is real potential for superb original comedy if he invests more into this idea. Nonetheless the show is still perfectly joyful as an hour of classic character comedy.

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