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Interiors With Johnny VegasTheatre Review: Interiors ★★★

By Brian Logan in The Guardian Posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

Johnny Vegas doesn’t so much climb the property ladder as walk under it in this site-specific solo comedy at the Manchester International Festival. Vegas plays Jeffrey Parkin, who’s showing us around his three-bedroom Chorley semi with a view to making a sale. Purr as Parkin flaunts the pan rack, inspired by the Humber Bridge. Coo at his root-wood coffee table. Then blanche as his beer-bellied Sarah Beeny act crumbles, revealing structural flaws in the property-is-God value system. Interiors (co-created with Stewart Lee) is less Location, Location, Location, more Depression, Depression, Depression.

That drama is a long time coming, however. For most of the show’s hour-long duration, it’s just Parkin riffing on property, with diminishing returns. There are choice jokes: Ikea are “flatpack paedophiles, preying on the weak and vulnerable”. And much fun is derived from Vegas’s ad hoc responses to audience questions. Yawning beneath all this is the gulf between Parkin’s self-image as an aspirational Montenegro property magnate and his bathetic provincial reality. One bizarre detour sees him fast-forward his Farinelli: Il Castrato DVD to find the scene he’d turn into a painting for his living-room wall. Parkin, you see, is a world cinema type of guy – albeit one whose sales spiel forever quotes cheesy Hollywood blockbusters.

Something’s got to give, and it does – even if the transition from comedy to tragedy is clunking. A home isn’t about design features, it’s about the relationships between the people living there. And Parkin’s relationships have (for reasons not made clear) fallen foul of the wrecking ball. Vegas and Lee’s demolition of the property fetish is hardly more subtle. But if the theatrical architecture is crude, Vegas brings it to life with extemporising flair. A house isn’t a status symbol, he suggests in this enjoyable situationist curio – it’s somewhere to try and live well.

Written by Brian Logan in The Guardian on 4th July 2007. Filed Under: Interiors, Johnny Vegas, Manchester International Festival
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