This Is Our Pilot

Here’s the set-up: Annie and Lena have (somehow) secured an interview to pitch some ideas for new television shows to Mr Big TV Man (unseen).  The motive is more mercenary than artistic.  Thus their show has the opportunity to reference – and send up – a variety of television show genres: the ‘reality’ show, the quiz show, the Playschool type show, and so on. 

They arrive on stage bickering – which more or less sets the tone for what follows.  Their preparation for their pitch interview is one of the funniest sequences – maybe because they are contrasting personas and playing off versions of each other instead of off television types or caricatures.  Lena plays it a little tentative and apologetic, while Annie flashes a huge over-confident smile.  It’s physical comedy with a mix of affection, aggression, reassurance and hostility – and silliness.  Lena: ‘Now don’t swear!’  Annie: ‘Oh, fuck, sorry. Oh, but don’t mention that your Mum died.’  Lena: ‘I’m sure it’ll come up…’ 

But what follows are their pitches to Mr Big TV Man – which are, as well as pushing bravely into the absurd, well, a little hit and miss.  Blatant aggression is a key element, as are poo jokes.  In these sketches – one after another – Next! -  Lena proves a great clown – of the victim type - and a sharp satirist, playing anything between a cheating contestant in a sort of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ quiz show (an audience member farts loudly to signal the right answer), to a glazed over rube on a travel show (I think), to a reality show contestant desperate to pick a useable loo.  Annie plays the MC, the quiz master, the sadist: she is more the White Clown – loud, aggressive, bullying and sabotaging – but she also sings sweetly while plinking on a ukulele. 

Fortunately, both these women are very likeable and appealing which earns them a great deal of latitude from the audience, but I’d guess it was all a lot funnier in rehearsal in somebody’s living room than – as a whole – it proves to be in front of a paying audience.  Michelle Brasier is cited as ‘Mentor’, but does that mean she directed too?  Why did no one say, ‘Annie, you’re shouting, and we can’t understand you’?  Or, ‘Lena, is that bit of miming as clear as it should be?’  Or, ‘Annie, you’re exactly the same in this sketch as you were in the last – some variation, please?  Or, ‘How about a punchline?’

What’s familiar about This Is Our Pilot is that we can see that these performers are talented and intermittently funny, but in need of better material (maybe some input from a writer?) and some sharp direction.  Their manic exuberance carries them for a while, but fifty minutes can be a long time.

Michael Brindley