Interiors
Brian Logan ***** - The Guardian

Johnny Vegas doesn't so much climb the property ladder as walk under it in this site-specific solo comedy. He plays Jeffrey Parkin, who is showing us around his three-bedroom Chorley semi with a view to making a sale. Purr as he flaunts the pan rack, inspired by the Humber Bridge. Coo at his root-wood coffee table. Then blanch 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.

Drama is a long time coming, however. For most of the show's hour-long duration, it is just Parkin riffing on property, with diminishing returns, but 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 property magnate in Montenegro, and his bathetic provincial reality.
Something's got to give, and it does. Here, the transition from comedy to tragedy is clunking. A home is not about design features, it is 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 is not a status symbol, he suggests in this enjoyable situationist curio, it is somewhere to try to live well.