Another day, and another terrifically warm and naturally hilarious hour from a talented raconteur with a generous soul. Several shows have been a balm for a jaded spirit this week, and Vix Leyton‘s ‘Antihero’ is the latest. It can’t be a mere coincidence that, as with Louise Atkinson‘s phenomenal show, the great Lucy Porter is in the audience. Her presence in a crowd seems to be a guarantor of quality. Leyton is certainly delighted she’s there.
Leyton’s show is a great piece of storytelling that mines gold from the quotidian embarrassments and social faux pas that we all endure. While most would shrug them off, Vix has clearly stewed on them until her internal plug has been fired into the atmosphere and they all come pouring out in a molten torrent of catharsis. The thing is, she’s a people pleaser. She doesn’t want to be, but she allows herself to be carried along through one daft situation after another out of social anxiety. Interminable dates, a gentle case of mistaken identity, a crush that inadvertently leads to bar work; she constantly amplifies her own internalised humiliation in her determination to avoid it.
There’s no reinvention of the wheel in Leyton’s material. The topics are cosily familiar, and she’s part of a wave of newer acts who are eschewing huge themes and emotional messages in favour of just aiming to be funny. Great stand-up, well-crafted gags, compellingly presented. And Vix’s presentation is excellent. She’s a constantly beaming presence, vivacious and charismatic with a little dash of snark and just the occasional hint of ditz. And she has no need to break new comedy ground when her take on the topics of relationships and family are so wittily written and performed.
Particularly enjoyable are Vix’s frequent references to her mother, the vividly-rendered ‘Mama Leyton’. Leyton paints this relationship with great impressionist daubs of affection, indicating her wish to inherit Mama’s mantle of local character, or as she phrases it, ‘belligerent village eccentric’. A woman who can bear the pettiest of grudges for years with ascetic determination, she’s taken against one comedian in particular for stepping on her toes, and against Philip Schofield before it was sadly understandable. Vix could be forgiven for mining a full show from her mother’s leftfield sagacity. She must have been tempted.
It’s hard to think of a show at this year’s Fringe that hurtles through 60 minutes at such a rate of knots. Leyton builds such a head of fluently chatty momentum that when she wraps things up the first response is incredulity that all that time had passed. She might be worried that she’s too much of a people-pleaser, but in this context that’s absolutely what Vix Leyton is, and wonderfully so.
‘Antihero’ runs until Sun 27 Aug 2023 at The Stand 4 at 13:25