The Lawrence Sweeney Mix
- 27 February 2007, BBC Radio 4, 11pm
Josie Lawrence and Jim Sweeney go where many have gone before: live improv. And they don't do too badly
It takes a brave pair to do improv. in front of a raucous crowd. But these two have more than enough credentials, characters and convincing accents to calculate the risk in Radio 4's favour.
The format is as follows: Josie Lawrence reads out the bare bones of a ready-made situation, such as a 'family secret' or 'forgotten treasure' to the audience whose bolshiest members shout out surreal-sounding contexts; "Your mother's your father and your father's your mother" or "the universe", respectively. Then producer Dawn Ellis adds atmosphere via sound effects to complete the piece for broadcast.
For 30 minutes, Josie and Jim riff off each other with genuine chemistry. Occasionally they throw one another a bone but mainly they try and trick each other to illicit comic gold. The first gauntlet came early on, when Josie forced Jim to dream up a poem on the spot, which he did aptly. And indeed, Jim pretty much pipped Josie to the post throughout, propelling off-the-cuff comments faster than she could change her accent.
Make or break time came when the skits lasted longer than two minutes with no end in sight. Hence a lengthy piece about sandwiches (weighing in at almost four minutes) soon became tiresome while the two-minute-long 'romantic discovery' skit sang with punchy comic timing.
All duff bits were promptly derided by the pair afterwards, with Josie
mock-shocked at Jim's reliance on innuendo to garner laughter, while he
wittily rebuffed her repeated poo jokes. The audience closed the show by
shouting out the credits en masse and cementing a union of good-spirited
camaraderie between crowd and comedy duo.
Georgie Hobbs
