Nina Conti: In Your Face

Nina Conti: In Your Face
Criterion Theatre, London
March 3rd – 12th, 2016

by Haresh Patel

It’s all in the voices and faces – and it’s brilliant. Nina Conti’s ventriloquist act has been honed over the last few years into a full solo theatrical performance. A potentially hazardous combination of improv, audience participation, puppetry and voice could all go awry in the hands of a lesser talent. But, Nina is a bloody genius.

She has so many levels of improvisational workmanship, instant character study and a knack for timing that the multi levels of good-natured and self-effacing humour all work together to a show in which my face hurt so much from laughing.

Much rests on the quality of the audience members plucked to wear her comedy masks, but when she gets a good bunch, she has the good humour to let them give as much as they want, while still being in vague control.

A master of ventriloquism, improv and puppetry, Nina Conti gets In Your Face at Criterion Theatre until March 12th, 2016.

www.criterion-theatre.co.uk