Laura Solon
Laura Solon came out of nowhere and won the Perrier in 2005 with her debut one woman character show. As a result of this fact I was really excited to see her most recent show “The Owl of Steven”and naturally was anticipating seeing something genuinely different and special. Sadly this was not the case. While she is clearly a clever writer and has some great one-liners scattered fairly regularly throughout the hour, the whole thing was rather underwhelming. In a packed room of roughly 130 audience members the laughs simply weren’t big enough and there was no tension or excitement at all. A man behind me fell asleep and I must admit that my attention too wandered at times. Having seen many other lesser known comedians win over smaller and more sceptical audiences I felt that it was a bit lazy not to give a large audience of fans something more substantial. The plot was quirky and the writing was clever and it’s true that vocally her characters were distinct and subtle. However there was nothing visual in this hour and in my opinion that is very slack indeed, it would have been more exciting watching big men’s clothing in the tumble dryer for an hour.
It felt more like watching a recording for Radio 4, and if it had been then I suppose I would have been satisfied. However this was a staged production which people had paid for and there was nothing to see. If you closed your eyes you would not have missed anything. Having just seen Colin Hoult in his character show Enemy of the World I was very aware of the visual treats and jokes you can give an audience but apart from one moment with a stuffed owl, there was nothing to witness. Solon is obviously very bright and the Radio 4 audience love her and yes she does have some nice one-liners, however I for one felt cheated when I saw this off-beat, pleasant but ultimately underwhelming hour.
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