Photo Kirsten McTernan.
Sue – the lonesome, piano-plonking Christian – is back with a vengeance. In this, her ‘second coming’, she beckons us into her tastelessly-decorated living room, hands us a shot of eggnog and provides a festive freakshow armed with a piano, a soaring falsetto and a mini orchestra of deadpan, back-up Sues. After a cult-following developed at her Edinburgh Fringe show, My Name Is Sue, Sue is on tour to bring her unhinged joviality to audiences across the UK.
In a menacing medley of darkly funny ballads, Sue (embodied by the buttock-clenchingly hilarious Dafydd James) waxes lyrical on such subjects as the unfortunate vanishing of Macaulay Culkin, the lamentable tragedy of the Manky Goat and her intoxicated liaison with a dodgy Father Christmas.
In true seasonal spirit, the audience participates too in The Nativity According to Sue, in which Sue awaits the arrival of a new messiah from the very depths of her womb. Unsettled audience members are pulled up on stage to play wise men, lonely shepherds and the angel Gabrielle (‘Dreeeams can come true!’). It is Sue-perb.
The brilliantly disturbed minds behind this are Dafydd James and Ben Lewis, who, along with their indubitably talented company (Megan Affonso, Elena Pena and Francesca Simmons), have created something startlingly original that bears significance to almost nothing ever seen before in the comedy world. Although character comedy and comedy songs may be mediums that are considered to be one-dimensional, the company manage to blend in bracing musical interludes with a character exceedingly developed who has the (albeit slim) possibility of existing in the real world.
Sue Timms is a comic creation that has the potential to become something eternal in the comedy world. I know whose house I’m going to for Christmas dinner.