Sooz Kempner is a swiss army knife of entertainment talents: gorgeous singer, great comedian, and very good gymnast (as comedians go).
📍PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth – Chamber Room
📅 Aug 18-28
🕖 5:10pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hour
👥 Creator/Performer: Sooz Kempner
👥 Producers: Sooz Kempner / PBH’s Free Fringe
💰 Pay What You Can
🎂 18+
🎭 Not fully wheelchair accessible
Sooz Kempner completes her trilogy of console derived shows with Playstation, a comedic ode to that 1998 32-bit sensation which made Sooz finally feel like a grown-up. Sooz however, isn’t convinced that she ever did grow up, and isn’t sure that growing up is anything like it’s cracked up to be anyway.
The show itself is a well-orchestrated blend of stand-up, multi-media, and personal anecdote. Fortunately the vocally gifted Kempner also gives herself chances to sing, managing to make The Star-Spangled Banner simultaneously hilarious and impressive. It is, she avers, the greatest national anthem, unlike God Save the Queen…The QR dares to suggest the Welsh and the South Africans have America absolutely beat in the anthem stakes, but it’s her show, and she works that song hard.
Overall her material is an intersection of gaming culture, political observation, and personal history. It’s continually funny, engaging, and not a little charming; Kempner has awesome comic timing, and a razor sharp sense of the absurd. Captain Tom might be a hero to you (and her to be fair), but he’s also fair game to lock in a fridge. Expect the liberal slaying of online right-wing trolls, Sooz’s doomed ambitions as an Olympic gymnast, moving back home at age 37, and her unexpected censorship on Facebook. It’s quite a ride!
Sooz’s passionate history with gaming also offers a nostalgia trip for many, but is never so esoteric as to exclude the non-initiate from the chuckles. Playstation isn’t all light-hearted cultural/online fun though, and whilst Sooz finds humour from being on national TV through the horrifying 2019 General election results, Covid rampaging through her household, and personal losses, it’s close to the heart stuff.
Ultimately, if Lara Croft doesn’t offer quite such a lively comedic totem as her enduring hero, Sonic the Hedgehog (central to her previous 2 shows in the trilogy), still she makes it, or rather her, work. The finale is truly excellent, a well orchestrated, and well foreshadowed tour de force. Sooz might feel as if she’s failed at a few things in life, and maybe that does make her feel like adulting isn’t quite for her, but she’s absolutely nailed the singing comedian gig.
(Image Credit: Sooz Kempner)
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