Review: Celebrity, Out Of The Blue, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, ends March 8

9:32am Friday 7th March 2008

CRAVING fame is nothing new. Andy Warhol once allocated everyone their 15 minutes, talent or no talent, Lou Reed or Edie Sedgwick, but there is a difference today.

The celebrity pool is spreading its ripples ever wider. Our obsession with the famous has spawned ever more magazines, and where once celebrity was the by-product, now it is the starting point. "Look, I just wanted to be famous," says Naomi Sheldon's dumb-struck, gum-chewing Big Brother winner in her only comment while all around her - impression manager, agent et al - thrash out how to revive flagging media coverage only six months after her victory.

This is one of the longer vignettes in Professor of English Mary Luckhurst's satirical sketch show, in which performance, film and live music interweave and no form of celebrity escapes a student stoning.

Celebrity culture is so pervasive that all writer-director Luckhurst's targets are instantly familiar, and this should work to advantage in a send-up, giving licence for exaggeration, cynicism and mockery. But while the spirit is willing, some of the comedic flesh is weak. A running gag involving Dominic Allen's pretentious Booker Prize winner boring the pants off a film crew soon runs out of steam; three songs for Ian McCluskey leave singer and audience alike feeling mutually uncomfortable.

Sketches are not the most substantial form of theatre, and their hit-and-miss ratio can be frustrating, but Tom Cantrell, Anna Rohde and Matt Springett, the stand-out loose cannon of this University of York troupe, give momentum to the unbroken 90 minutes.

Too much of what we see is too obvious, but gradually Luckhurst tightens her focus and asserts her own voice. One extended sketch stands out, late on, wherein a cabal of spin doctors first decides to destroy a 16-year-old girl who has slept with a politician, only to deem the MP to be expendable instead.

Much of the visual presentation is conventional Footlights fare until the finale, when voices overlap, your head becomes overloaded with images and information, sounds distort amid repetition and the destructive consequence of celebrity is considered. The show would have benefited from seeing more of this: the other side of the fame coin.

Box office: 01904 623568.

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