Edinburgh Fringe 2009
Low Down
A comical insight into the lives of 6 characters as they attend their weekly therapy session. With a fabulous score and hilarious story-line, catch this show while you can!
Review
‘Have a Nice Life’ welcomes its audience into ‘the circle’ for 90 minutes of group therapy set to music. Sound like madness? Well it is, but of the best kind.
And so we meet 6 incredibly eccentric characters on the modern day path to enlightenment: Chris, a hopeless romantic (who also happens to be hopeless); Frank, a brash sex driven postal worker; Jackie, an incessantly chatty and somewhat absentminded mother of many; Jean, unlucky in love, or more specifically with the fidelities of her various partners; Barbara, who has some anger problems to say the least; and new addition Amy, who apparently has no problems at all. Add to them their incompetent young therapist Patrick, who clearly has a plethora of issues, and you have 90 minutes of ridiculous, and yet strangely relatable, fun.
It of course wouldn’t be musical theatre if these characters didn’t all have softer sides and revelations in store, and each development (or character regression) is set to Conor Mitchell’s fabulous score, unquestionably influenced by Sondheim, but with a Kurt Weil edge to it. He is clearly a composer to watch, and his music paves the way for some hilarious pastiche choreography.
‘Have a Nice Life’ is therefore a pleasure to watch and listen to. It does take a little while to get going, but once it does it’s a work of true brilliance. An amusing, well observed romp through a mine-field of exaggerated issues has been taken on with a wonderful wit and humour. What more could you want out of a midday show? Catch it while you can – it runs till the end of the week only.
