Nicki Hobday Conquers Space

Deconstructing the theatrical experience to infinity and beyond, collaborators Nicki Hobday and Neil Mackenzie have created a hilarious piece of consequential nonsense. Experimental, dangerous, funny and occasionally profound, this is precisely the stuff of which great fringe experiences are made.

The question is what constitutes performance. With a subsidiary on where the interface between stand-up comedy and theatre lies, Hobday describes the empty stage while moving out of the auditorium and beginning to take control of it.

Of course it has all probably been done before. Whether it has ever been done with the charm, wit and sense of timing that Hobday displays is another matter. Alone on the stage, describing the performance she is creating, she is easily balanced in her physicality. She is as precise in her movements as her language is precise in drawing her audience into its ever-tightening spiral.

There is a bit of an over-dependence on sound effects and pre-recorded passages, which requires strong technical support from Peter Hobday. And as Nicki Hobday moves to her final tableaux, in which she fulfils the show's title, there are shades of lost opportunity to further extend its interactive nature and so challenge, even further, the division between audience and performer.