saints and sinners of the stage and screen
saints and sinners of the stage and screen
Marion Deprez is Gorgeous
Lucy's Room (The Vaults)
25th November 2014
★★★☆☆
Photography provided by Mimetic Festival
Sometimes a show has an incredibly abstract, artsy title which adds an intelligent layer of meaning to the whole piece. Other times, well, it just does what it says on the tin. Marion Deprez is gorgeous. That's a fact, and that's the whole premise for Deprez's 40-minute solo show.
I say solo, but the show opens with a deliberately unintelligible 5 minutes of shouting from a uncredited warm-up act dressed in a combination of pyjamas and Army uniform. We're invited to mimic his strange movements and hug the rest of the audience before he introduces Deprez and disappears into the night. It's an odd beginning, resulting in plenty of confused, slightly uneasy laughter. However, it certainly leaves the audience game for anything that follows.
Having seen a short preview of the show at the festival's launch night, I had an idea of what to anticipate from Deprez, and I was excited to see how she would develop that snippet into a full length show. Disappointingly, that snippet was entirely reflective of the full-length show, she didn't really do anything else. The concept is that Deprez is so attractive she doesn't even need to be funny - as she says, "I could just stand here - you'd be happy."
Whilst that in itself is fairly original and entertaining, and a gleeful fingers up at the industry, the joke doesn't actually stretch to an entire gig. As a part of a larger comedy night or even as a recurring character in a BBC3 sketch sitcom, it has legs. (So does Deprez, she certainly has a fine pair of pins.) However, 40 minutes of the "cutie pose" and "look at me, I'm gorgeous" wears a little thin after a while. For it to be sustainable, there either needs to be emotional depth the the character - the go-to for that on this site is Graham Fellow's fleshed-out John Shuttleworth - or some sort of vulnerability beneath the bluster. Al Murray's Pub Landlord displaying rampant xenophobia to mask the pain of his wife leaving him for a Frenchman, for example.
Where Deprez struggles is that some performers are funny, others are gorgeous and some tick both those boxes. Take The Ruby Darlings, the leading ladies are both attractive and talented, and that's the level of competition that Deprez has to keep up with.
With the Mimetic Festival, and particularly with Lucy's Room, there's a lot of background bleed, and as the night goes on, the audience get slightly rowdier. In many respects, it's like a tame version of Edinburgh. "Heckling is great, but I'm French. Heckle slowly please," reprimands Deprez at one point. However, she doesn't really want to engage with heckles, or acknowledge any of the other loud performances taking place in neighbouring rooms - she's planned out her act, and she's going to deliver it.
Deprez has a thick French accent, but it's clearly exaggerated for the show, and I don't buy the language barrier remark. Underneath the character, there's obviously a very smart lady and I know she can understand exactly what the audience are shouting out. It can be scary allowing your audience to interact in an unforeseen way, but the best kind of standups are the ones who take this risk.
Despite her refusal to detour from her scripted material, Deprez has the same hilarious overly confident self-belief as circuit vet Alexis Dubus' Marcel Lucont. He's really made a name for himself with the role and with some more work, I can see Deprez carving out the same success. Her surface character and delivery are fantastic; she just needs to find a way of sustaining the laughs. Is she the funniest woman on the fringe circuit? Well, non. But is she gorgeous? Sans aucun doute.
Marion Deprez is Gorgeous opened on 26th November and runs until 29th November 2014 at The Vaults, as part of Mimetic Festival.
Nearest tube station: Waterloo (Bakerloo, Northern, Jubilee)