Review by Esme Hallworth

The Crate at Assembly George Square

Lacklustre is not in this man’s vocabulary. Rory Cargill serves up a salacious tour de farce of TV through the ages. Our host for the evening, Beau Crème, is an over the hill TV star whose public success, unlike his ego, has felt the beatings of time and culture change. Beau Crème guides us through a deep dive into the zeitgeist of each decade, from the golden age of Red (Blue) Paul (Peter) to the success comedy duos and reality TV. Every decade has its own dedicated parody, each as ostentatious and outrageous as the next. Poetically catch-free phrases aplenty, Cargill taps into the evidently vast potential for the pointless and perverted in these eras and puts on a show that might just blur your eyes with laughter.

An impressive rig of TV screens accompanies Cargill on stage, with a large central screen and more flanking its sides. Beau Crème appears and reappears on screen throughout, punctuating each era change with astute observations and cultural commentary. The screens sync up and dazzle with clips from the respective eras, with laughter prompts, barking prompts to name but a few. The production and editing are anything but amateur, lulling you into a false sense that you are watching an informative documentary, then BAM, enter Cargill in a bedazzled outfit and bouncing wig to hoist you back up to the haughty heights of the Beau Crème-o-sphere.

Cargill is an all-in entertainer with an undying commitment to the bit. Every moment is carefully crafted and wrung out for every drip of its comedic potential. Amidst the mayhem, Cargill can be forgiven for momentary momentum lapses being one man carrying the weight of a million characters and costumes. Audience participation is warned about and warmed into though still palpably feared with the unwitting crowd members becoming game show participants producing a hysterical and perplexing show within a show within a show. This is a well-fleshed out, fine-tuned feast for the eyes and live daytime television at its most addictively insufferable.

I’m enjoying that I saw this, that I saw this I’m….

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