Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway? review – masterful ventriloquist’s sublime silliness
The early phase of Nina Conti’s career was marked by restless boundary pushing, as she – and her sidekick Monkey – twisted ventriloquism into ever-surprising new shapes. Its recent phase been more samey, and reliant on her now-signature trick: turning volunteers into human ventriloquist’s dummies, and animating them in improvised scenes onstage. Her touring show Whose Face Is It Anyway? cleaves to the formula, which is no bad thing. What returning Conti-watchers lose in novelty, we gain in seeing a master back at work, elevating her brand of off-the-cuff voice-throwing and organised havoc to a state of near comedy grace.
Part of the trick is selecting stooges, and the show starts with old-fashioned crowdwork – led by Conti, with backchat from her glove-puppet simian. Conti’s been telling some of these jokes, and feigning surprise at Monkey’s indiscretions, for decades, but she does it artfully, loosening up her crowd and hoarding intel on prospective co-stars for the stunts to come. The first is a Sainsbury’s checkout assistant invited onstage to discuss her lax approach to shop security. Next are two PE-teacher sisters, who sing us a song about the ballet they once performed as kids.
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In neither instance are they saying (or singing) anything, of course – Conti is doing it all, while her stooges collapse in giggles behind their latex half-masks. And we giggle too – at Conti’s presumption, as she innocently interviews these volunteers, then not-so-innocently supplies the answers herself; at the sisters’ moment-to-moment delight in one another’s ridiculousness. And at the communicative chaos, as all parties feel their way through the daft scenarios Conti devises for them.
The mania abates midway, when the masks are shelved and Monkey offers therapy to members of the audience. It falls flat, this section, its main value being to identify three participants for a final ad hoc scene, in which a middle-aged couple instruct a pregnant young woman in what to expect of childbirth. It’s a joy to watch Conti’s human puppets surrender themselves, safe behind their masks, to silliness – and to see Conti, too, supremely in command of the territory, somewhere between improv, comedy and ventriloquism, she’s made unmistakably her own.
