Edinburgh Festival 2006 reviews & interviews

The Herald - 5 stars - by Colin Somerville

Performance comedy of the highest order in this hour of aural voyeurism from Lizzie Roper, seamlessly possessed by characters stained by their sexual experiences. The show, she explains, is based on a series of interviews conducted with various individuals about their sex lives, converted into soundbites and hotwired into her head. She then delivers a virtuoso performance, her characters including a plummy Jungian analyst and a bouncer in a fetish club.

This is frank, fearless and filthy stuff, with the lovely Lizzie flitting from one character portrait to another in the crack of a whip, teasing out a foible here, a fetish there. From a strange erotic encounter with an elf to an internet- dating addict with a disturbing vocal resemblance to Griff Rhys Jones – "We're lonely, not horny" – all human life is here. With knobs on.

What makes it work so well is Roper's superb control of accent, intonation and body language, bringing every scenario to lurid life. Wiping away at this grubby surface for long enough gets to some home truths about sexuality and sex lives. "Having unprotected sex because it just feels so much better may not be an excuse," she says, in the guise of a thrusting American lady. "But it is a reason."

There is so much material here, all of it so deftly handled, that you may have to go back two or three times to ensure you caught all of it. Which would be no hardship.

Edinburgh Evening News - 5 stars

LIZZIE ROPER just graduated. She used to be funny and clever. Now, having bypassed smart, she's gone straight to extremely intelligent for her latest show, Peccadillo Circus. Oh yeah, and she's filthier than ever.

The lights went down on the eager beavers in the audience, most of whom looked like they had seen her before and knew what to expect. Roper appeared, projected on to the back wall in a film which explained what she was going to do.

She had interviewed people from all walks of life, getting them to anonymously reveal things about themselves - their fantasies, their fetishes - and, with the help of an MP3 player, she would be repeating their words verbatim, illustrated and interpreted with actions.

It wasn't as simple as it sounds, but Roper breezed onstage and made it look easy. Enjoying a stream of hysterical, pithy - sometimes downright smutty - dialogue, the audience also got Roper's signature rubbery facial contortions, and her excellent ear for accents into the bargain.

The show examined, surprisingly closely, how members of the public from around the world (including an Edinburgh accountant) felt about sex and sexuality, and it wasn't as predictable as it might have seemed. Judging by the way members of the audience shifted in their seats, some of them found it all hit a little close to home.

Seven or eight interviewees were used throughout the show and, while Roper had edited their remarks, it seemed mostly to cut out unnecessary gaps. There was nothing risqué removed, yet nor was it simply a stream of rudeness. Occasionally the abandon with which people described their pleasures was punctuated with unexpected disappointment or even pain. Not many can express so much pathos with such a healthy dose of humour.
Roper not only managed to get the audience laughing, sometimes even at themselves, she also got them happily staring into an often uncomfortable mirror. Brilliant.

Broadway Baby - 5 stars

A hilarious tour de force about the extraordinary sex lives of ordinary people.

Lizzie Roper is a very funny stand up and talented actress. This year, however, she’s brought a very different show to the Festival, and the result is a riveting and hysterical sixty minutes.

For months she researched the sex of lives of men and women, straight and gay, gaining their trust and cajoling them into committing to tape every detail of their sex lives. She honed the final choice down to six remarkable characters, and listens to their stories through an ear piece on stage, perfectly replicating live every nuance, breath, laugh and word of their recording. The result is extraordinary, the technique rendering Roper’s performances as much more real and immediate than a simply learned script. This is Creature Comforts meets Kinsey.

And one wonders if Kinsey ever extracted such remarkable information. I thought I was pretty unshockable, but the things people get up to is mind boggling. Perhaps more interesting is the effect their experiences have had on the way they see the world. I particularly liked the ex – psychiatrist who has heard so many weird and twisted confessions from clients down the years that when she watches Crimestoppers she thinks she knows all the rapists and perverts who committed the crimes.

Roper slips seamlessly between segments of her six characters, her remarkable vocal and acting skills instantly letting the audience know who is talking. And boy is she aided by her subjects words as they provide material it would be almost impossible to make up. The sad but candid older man who seeks women on the internet informs us dryly, and without irony, that the Germans didn’t want the Americans to know Hitler was into watersports with his niece in case they used the information to blacken his name!

One minor cavil is that because she has to stay utterly faithful not only to the sense of her subjects’ words but the exact rhythm and timing, she is sometimes unable to pause for laughter to subside. And there’s plenty of laughter as well as poignancy. This must be one of the most original shows on the fringe, and if you miss it you’ll miss something very special.

ThreeWeeks - 5 stars

In totally effortless fashion, Lizzie Roper acts out recordings of the general public's sexual secrets with devastatingly funny results. Equipped with a wide range of convincing accents, this is unrelenting, versatile comedy, performed with expert timing and comic professionalism. Celebrities and fellow comedians alike are flocking to witness this rip-roaring insight into sexual reality. Some might inevitably blush throughout the show, but they cannot deny the comic flawlessness of a comedienne who has her audience in the palm of her hand every time she steps on stage. This is definitely a comedy climax not to be missed, so saunter over to the Gilded Balloon and join in this side-splitting orgy of fun and frolics

The Stage - Listed as a ‘Must See’ Show

Nominated for Best Solo Show, The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence 2006
 Listed as a comedy performance, Peccadillo Circus is actually a piece of theatre and a very good one at that.

Roper has interviewed a broad cross-section of people about their sex lives, chopped up the interviews, edited them together and placed them on an MP3 player that she wears around her neck, listening to it through her earpieces

That she is effectively listening to her lines should not in anyway diminish this as a theatrical experience. She repeats what is being said, every word, nuance, pause and stammer, allowing the people speaking to use her body like a spiritual medium.

While she speaks their words, she contorts into them, every inch of her trying to convey something about the person talking. Her characterisation is very good - she becomes the elderly lady, the internet swinger, the dominatrix. This is Creature Comforts live and not to be missed.

Chortle - 4 stars

As a character act, Lizzie Roper's always had a lusty, bawdy charm, offering creations that tend to be extravagant caricatures.

Well, this year she's turned the performance dial down from 11 and delegated away the writing completely. The words are taken verbatim from the genuine conversations she had with real people about sex, in all its complex variations.

From a lascivious young Irishwoman, to a 76-year-old Jungian analyst, from a S&M fetishist to a screaming American queen, they all spoke frankly to Roper who now, like a cipher, repeats them- mimicking every accent, every intonation, every verbal tic or nervous laugh.

Hearing such authentic, if one-sided, conversation highlights just how phoney so much scripted dialogue is, and how naturally funny people are during an unguarded chat. It's not necessarily what they say, but how they say it, that gets the laughs here.

The subject matter means Roper is pretty much a one-woman late-night Five documentary, covering a range of tastes, persuasions and fetishes. Her motive is not, however, to be voyeuristic or judgmental, but to try to mount some small challenge to the repressed British attitude about sex. But on hearing some of the more outlandish tales, especially from the outrageous gay man, you might understand why reticence can be a virtue.

All Roper's subjects, though, are marvellously open, and it's often the casual way they discuss their encounters that gets a laugh. They might as well be talking about great bus journeys they've had, such is the matter-of-fact manner employed- and that's why it's funny.

Our psychoanalyst is a delight, a spirited woman who's clearly seen it all and unfazed by anything the world's got left to throw at her. Roper's portrayal is hugely sympathetic to this open, characterful woman- who possibly had a little too much sherry before being interviewed.

But she also captures perfectly the spirit of less instantly likeable characters, such as the quiet internet geek who meets -or grooms? - desperate women on Craig's List and who talks with all the excitement of EL Wisty when he's describing his sex life. A 'comedy' version of this character would make him creepy and lascivious, but in Roper's skilful hands, his lonely vulnerability and delicate humanity shines through.

For a faultless performance, a subtle execution of an inspired idea and a real insight into the way people think, talk and fuck, Peccadillo Circus comes highly recommended.

The Guardian (Interview by Brian Logan) - The secret life of the lippy dominatrix

Verbatim theatre, we know about. But verbatim stand-up? Lizzie Roper is a comic and actor who starred last year in All the Right People Come Here, a docu-play about Wimbledon tennis by the theatre group Recorded Delivery. The company makes shows by taping interviews with the public and, earphones in ears, repeating them to an audience live on stage. Now, in pioneering fashion, Roper has cribbed the idea for her Fringe comedy show, an investigation into people's sex lives called Peccadillo Circus.

" I fell in love with the technique," she says. It's easy to see why. "As an actor, you're constantly looking for a naturalistic delivery. But when you do a verbatim piece, you realise how appalling people's grammar actually is." The "recorded delivery" technique celebrates the idiosyncrasy of colloquial speech. "No matter who was interviewed and put on stage," says Roper, "if their every vocal tic was represented, it would be hilariously funny."

The more so when the subject under discussion is sex. Roper's show features testimony from coprophiliacs, swingers and a lippy dominatrix: ("He said he didn't come in here to be humiliated, and I'm thinking, 'Read the flyer!'") Research wasn't plain sailing, says Roper. "I put an advert online asking to speak to people, and I got loads of men saying, 'I'll come on your tits.' But eventually you whittle out the rapists."

Roper finally interviewed 14 people, of whom six have made it to the stage. "These are people you might sit next to on the bus and wouldn't know anything about," she says. "Now you're going to discover their amazing secrets." She's so excited about docu-comedy, she says, "I now carry a tape recorder with me at all times. This way of working has made me rejoice and see the comedy in everything. It's fascinating: what's more interesting than real people?"