Nikki Britton is Romanticide

As the title of the show has it, Nikki Britton’s fast and very funny stand-up spiel is anti-romantic.  Or, more exactly, it points up the contrast between ‘Romance’ and the harsh or sordid or humiliating or, sometime, smelly, reality.  For those of us conditioned by happy ending Hollywood or, in Ms Britton’s case, die-hard romantic grannies, Romance is the ideal.  The wafting cloud of bliss in which beautiful people speak softly - but correctly.  We aspire to be characters in a romance, but our animal natures – or the love object’s – let us down.  A long way down.  Time after time.  But the ideal persists.  The paradox persists.  What masochism!  Ms Britton isn’t really intent on killing Romance.  Just warn us against it.  

At our show, she stumbled on her way in to the tiny Ladies Lounge at The Forum, falling into a bloke’s lap, but recovering quickly with a risqué joke about what she found there (a foretaste of much that was to come) and then, two lines into her intro, the bloke realised he and friends were, whoops, in the wrong show… Ms Britton could have been snarky – or hurt -  but she courteously directed them to the right show and farewelled them with grace and equanimity.  She had us with that and I did wonder later if these deserters had had as good a time as we did.  Unlikely, frankly.  She kept us thoroughly entertained with her insights, observations and vivid physical comedy – for instance, her tasteful but unmistakeable mime of recoil from the proud display of a male member rampant.

The show is a mix of scarifying personal anecdotes – that can switch from gross-out to poignant in a breath – plus wry comment, apt cultural references and audience harassment – as in, ‘Hey, you two at the back - are you in a romantic relationship?  Come on – tell…’  You wince, you sigh, you laugh out loud.  True, at an hour and ten minutes the pace sometimes slows, the material is momentarily repetitious and the laughs go on hold, but Ms Britton’s infectious energy and attack carry us over that.  And how satisfying to see the set-ups of the first half paying off in the second.   

One reservation – and it’s a general observation – I do wish stand-up folks would resist the lure of technology – in the case of ‘Romanticide’ a music clip and a gross-out video – unless, of course, it works smooth as can be.  Otherwise, the show just dies as the performer fiddles with some gizmo and says in effect, ‘Um… bear with me… it worked at rehearsal… Oh… ah, now…’ 

That aside, Nikki Britton is certainly worth your time and the price of admission and you’ll emerge still laughing.

Michael Brindley