Katherine MacAlister watches a master at work in Nina Conti’s new show

It was Saturday night and my friend was in a foul mood. Ten minutes into Nina Conti’s new show at the Oxford Playhouse I peered round and found her crying with laughter, tears streaming down her face, convulsed.

It was opening night of the famous comedian/ventriloquist’s new show In Your Face, and as there was no precedent, we had no idea what to expect, except for an ad lib evening featuring audience participation, so were rather alarmed to find ourselves sitting rather too close to the front for comfort.

Luckily there were lots of fans desperate to get up on stage and have a go, making themselves known, shouting out and getting involved from the word go. And over the course of the evening, most of them were paraded around , fair game to Nina’s comedy mill.

Nina breezed on stage, looking gorgeous as always, her monkey as dry and acerbic as always, the perfect counterfoil to her owners well spoken, chatty, conversational style.

Warming us up, biding her time, sussing us out before moving in for the kill, she hauled a bearded student up on stage. The Spitting Image style rubber mouths/masks are placed over the face and operated by a rubber tube so that their mouths open and close on demand. Nina then provides the voices and plot.

Some, like the economist/marine biologist, don’t last long, and are thrown quickly back over the side.

The survey-conductor by day/masseur by night provided much more material, especially when paired up with Tom the butcher.

Tom’s parents were then called up on stage which is when we all fell apart. Nina’s language and scenarios were so obviously out of their comfort zone that it was hard to breath from laughing.

Nina breaks up the audience participation with songs, sketches and chat, as well as the memorable hypnosis skit, when monkey hypnotises her, totally immobilised until someone claps.

And yet despite Nina flying by-the-seat-of-her-pants, masks falling off, a surreal story-line, some awesome multi-tasking and endless hilarious hiccups, there were still the doubters.

“It must be staged,” two women were whispering during the interval.

If it is, I’ll eat my monkey.

5/5