REVIEW: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Jimmy Made Parole

Low Bar Theatre - Saturday 7 June [also ran Friday 6]

Charles Edward Pipe - sounds like a character already - has a thing for short plays about crime & criminals, and does well on them, high-star reviews from Edinburgh and the like.

Jimmy here does well too: I lost track of the number of crimes he’d committed in this one brief hour, we certainly couldn’t keep count of the number of drinks he had, and the cast of other low-lifes/-lives invoked stepped beyond the one-man formula. Plus he made up for the smallness of the cast by frequently involving the audience in the action, a trick he might have picked up doing standup.

The Grapes upstairs lounge was a very suitable setting for a film-noir-esque bit-parter - and surely there must be similarly evocative corners in every city he plays - and this all helps the semi-immersive [more like interactive] performance style, and encouraged us to lose inhibitions in a way a theatre crowd would be less likely to.

It’s funny, fast-moving - the performance didn’t let up for a moment, CEP has the successful young stand-up’s energy too - and certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously. The likeable [but be careful] Jimmy ends up with his dreams just as shattered as his body and meagre possessions, after those whom he has cheated over the previous hour catch up and take their reparations physically - but you just know he’s going to bob up again with a new hope and a dozen new scams on the morrow - unless the drink gets to him first.

Wittily written, engagingly played, and with perhaps a hidden little card trick along the way, I can’t say I saw a better show all festival. Watch for the name, he should be back for more, and though the level of salubriousness was just right, he could entertain a much larger room just as convincingly.

Dr Zeno