Either Stewart Lee was attempting a biting social satire of property developer culture or something more sinister in Interiors. Unfortunately he doesn’t manage either.
The main misjudgment in this blackly comic theatre-cum-performance art attempt is casting Johnny Vegas in the role of Jeffrey Parkin, the trouble shooter-turned-Montenegro property developer, whose beloved semi-detached home we are being shown around.
Vegas does a mean line in put-upon losers, and Parkin, naive, pretentious and desperately trying to sell up for a new life, is certainly that.
But having the shambolic St Helens comic uttering self-conscious gags about middle-class preoccupations with organic tea and MDF is akin to watching Germaine Greer in the Big Brother house: weird and unconvincing.
You can’t fault the ambition however. There are fleeting moments of pathos-driven darkness (one in particular cruelly interrupted with a question about council tax from an over-zealous audience member).
The Victorian house with its ‘original features’ is a fine vehicle for Parkin’s story, and unopened post and photos on the fridge all add to the voyeurism and discomfort.
But, unusually for Lee, the writing is stilted and the acting is without real conviction. In fact, unless you’re going along in buyer capacity, Interiors is an unholy waste of £25.
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Lee Mack, Mack The Life, 2012
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