My Obsession

It probably came as a surprise to playwright Suki Webster that her husband Paul Merton was so eager to star in her new Fringe play. When writing the two-hander in January, Webster was looking for a standup comedian to play a fictional comic, based on several other performers: one who is confronted by their biggest fan. Every comic’s worst nightmare, appealing though the chance of sycophantic adoration might be.

Webster plays the super-fan who breaks into the hotel room of Danny Heywood – the hodgepodge standup played by Merton. At a brisk 30 minutes, this is actually just a long sketch. The pair exchange silly pleasantries and eye-rolling wordplay that satirise the experience of meeting a scarily obsessive fan, but never really provide any kind of depth. It’s a legitimate presentation of Merton’s acting skill (a lot of which, admittedly, loiters close to his style of delivery as a comic) – and certainly, his performance embosses Webster’s gift for dialogue nicely. It’s a shame that, while entertaining, it is unmemorable.

The only thread worth tugging on is the idea that fans feel as if they know a performer, purely because they’ve digested their personal life through newspaper interviews. This minimised privacy we all yield to in the 24-hour news era is a ripe theme for investigation, but one left completely unexcavated by Webster. The real neuroses of fanatical behaviour are trivialised by the characters and the isolation which drives them to stalking is only explored within the confines of a bedroom farce. If Webster took these fixations and fed them into a workable piece of theatre, there would be more ideas to dissect and enjoy.