A find in the BBC's archives: Zoë Lambert and Dave Scott captured on stage performing Keep a Hold of Your Stuff at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2002. This clip is on the BBCi website and is Copyright © 2002 the BBC, including the error when they claim it is Julia performing (it's Zoë).
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This one-woman show with Zoë Lambert was performed at Live Theatre in mid-February 2002 and again at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. It's an hour long comedy with beautiful country and western songs arranged by Dave Scott of Kathryn Williams fame. Click one of the buttons to the right to hear Lost Property.
Here are a some reviews of the Fringe show at the Teviot Rooms:
There's a blistering amount of energy on display here, a one-woman show whose accents stretch from Aberdeen to Sydney, and whose characters range from a hokey country ticket inspector to a brashly sexual spinster. What's also to be found in abundance is a human warmth that neatly side-steps any note of tweeness. Rather, this is a sharp character study taking place within the confines of a train carriage en route to Edinburgh: each recognisable presence describes their motivations for leaving and their aspirations on arrival. Monologues gel seamlessly with conversations and culminate in a satisfyingly twisty conclusion. What could have been pure showboating is instead a softly gripping story, told with an admirably restrained talent.
Elbowing her way through the dodgy detritus of humanity filling up coach D on the Edinburgh train, an aspiring actress takes her seat and prepares for a journey that will convey her northwards to that hallowed Mecca for thespians. Barely has the whistle gone and she is conversing and communing with her fellow travellers - sex-deprived academic, self-obsessed mother with kid, precocious teenager, ubiquitous Aussie - just a typical day out really. Oh, and everyone's harbouring a secret of sorts. In this entertaining one-woman show from Live Theatre, Zoë Lambert is a bundle of infectious energy who jumps in and out of character and accent quicker than it takes Virgin to cancel the weekend service. Written by Julia Darling and directed by Jeremy Herrin, there is a tad too much technique and clever twist of phrase leading to gradual loss of the narrator's perspective. Nevertheless, some gorgeous surreal flights of fancy abound particularly in the form of the country and western conductor - personified by a husky voiced Lambert, accompanied by guitarist David Scott on laconic ballads such as Since I Became Lost Property and No Such Thing as a Straight Line.
Juggling a miasma of accents, attitudes and body shapes, Lambert pings elastically from one character to another, pausing only to entertain the passengers with a few artfully sung ditties, in the guise of a conductor who fancies himself as a bit of a Country & Western singer.
Lambert makes each character instantly recognisable in a play that requires lightning changes between speakers. As the enormous academic, Hilary, Lambert's face and body visibly expand. Suddenly, bunching up her mouth and eyes into squinty holes, she's the indolent teenager, bored out of her skull. Spreading her legs, her bottom lip protruding in a look of dim affability, Lambert becomes Kirk, an Australian with limited powers of discernment.
On other pages: How To Behave With The Ill, Inside Out, National Poetry Day 2004, Sudden Blossoms The Manifesto For Tyneside Upon England, The Great British Public Cold Calling, Attachments, The Writer's Choice, Doughnuts like Fanny's, The Last Post, The Lost Birds of England and Eating the Elephant.
Created by Julia Darling and Cornwell Internet. |
Last updated on 13 July 2003 by Roger Cornwell.
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