Beth Vyse - Get Up with Hands!

Well now, that was interesting. Beth Vyse has come a long way since her early days at the RSC: she’s veered very much into the leftfield, to be precise, and just kept on going.

Actually, these characters have been fermenting like a fine cheese for a few years now. Her previous show, Going Dark, bewildered many an unsuspecting visitor in 2013, some of whom ended up participating. It’s quickly evident that this one will follow a similar path, as we’re greeted at the door by an oddly-dressed chap who hands us a plastic hand, then asks our names, whether we’ve ever participated in live TV before, and if we recognise anyone in a sauna. This will eventually make a very loose amount of sense.

The next hour passes in an exhaustive mess of waving, hollering, brain-melting videos, catatonic mid-crowd breakdowns, onstage audience molestation, dildo smoothies, and much more besides. The main protagonist is Olive Hands, a failing, aging breakfast presenter on the condemned ITV9 who needs to make a huge splash to get a new gig. That chap is her much-abused son, Jazz Hands (bravura stuff from Ali Brice), who battles manfully to hold it together.

As Jazz Hands suggests, the actual gags can be pretty dire—a breakfast cook called Lusty Bee?—but, like a boy racer in a pimped-up old Metro, they tend to hurtle past quickly. This is really a vehicle for Vyse’s talents, an extraordinary performance of high-octane hysteria throughout. How does she keep it up?