Review: NINA CONTI: WHOSE FACE IS IT ANYWAY?, Apollo Theatre

If you wander down to the junction of ventriloquism and improv, there’s a chance you’ll meet Nina Conti standing there with her new show Whose Face Is It Anyway?

Well, I say new show but anyone else who has seen her over the last fifteen years will know roughly what to expect: banters with her sweary monkey companion, interviewing the audience members then whipping out the remote controlled masks. Even the show names are increasingly familiar. If the journey is predictable, the destination is always fresh and different with this genius puppeteer. Like Les Dawson on the piano or Meow Meow with her singing, she parlays one expert skill into setting up something quite unexpected each and every time. 

Conti presents a semantic conundrum in being a solo performer who never works alone, not least thanks to Monk. There’s some existential lines from the permanently exacerbated puppet as, in a vague Scottish burr reminiscent of her father, he contemplates whose hand will be shoved up inside him when she retires (in his view, preferably someone with small hands and short fingernails). From a comedy landscape that used to be filled to the brim with memorable duos - Morecambe and Wise, Cannon and Ball, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones - Conti and Monk may be our only through line back to those times.

The crowd work is a constant highlight of these shows. This being London, one of the fun parts of her audience interrogations are hearing the wide range of jobs that her punters hold down. There’s always the one (usually male) who forgets the first rule of cabaret and seems stunned to be picked out then highly evasive about what they actually do at the megacorp office they were sat in mere hours ago. Others come across as endearingly bashful (a carer) or vague (a researcher). Seeing Conti chat to them both then manipulate the conversation after the masks are slipped on is sheer delight, the polite conversation merely a prelude to a filthy discourse that is ribald with a capital R.

The theme last time was dating and relationship advice and, while there is some of that here, the middle section is given over to the cynical Monk handing out free therapy to four self-selected members of the audience. Those expecting words of solace or a solution were (as could be expected) disappointed but, as some form of consolation, they become members of the finale act which sees Conti voicing the entire quartet. It’s far from the first time she’s included something like this but it doesn’t take the shine off a routine that never fails to entertain. Maybe her next show could be called “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.”

Nina Conti continues on tour.

Photo credit: Paul Gilbey

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