Extrav

Extravaganza this year sets new standards of immaturity and irrelevance. The music and the acting are just fine, but the socalled script is pathetic. Will somebody tall me exactly what is funny about an actor standing before art audience and mouthing words like "shit" apparently limply for the sake of doing it? Admittedly most infants would find this spectacle amusing, but Extrav is not deviled for the benefit of small boys at the stage of enjoying lavatory humour. (And I'm sketches — I'm talking about almost the entire show!) There is nothing intrinsically funny about slang or boorish allusions to sex. Nor are impersonations of policemen or politicians automatically hilarious. All these things have to be at least slightly clever and set in a genuinely amusing context.

A loud, unfunny, unoriginal, mostly [unclear: ontopical] Extrav is not better than no Extrav at all.

Stephen Hunt.

•Review, p. 9.