Sinful (Gulliver’s Hotel, New Steine, Brighton)

The seven deadly sins have always seemed something of a strange concept to me, after all, how many of them are really deadly? Carly Tarett seems to have had a similar issue and so she has now written, and performs as a one-woman show, her own take on them with seven pant-wettingly funny short sketches.

First we deal with Gluttony and meet Bex, she’s a “Bexercise” class teacher for a group of food obsessed ladies. Very much in a Victoria Wood style, she tries so hard to get them motivated and fails miserably. Tonight’s class will be different though because Bex is going to introduce the class to “Imagicise!” – my kind of exercise, where you just imagine the places in which you are working out and the activities that you would be doing.  

In Lust we hear from a terribly posh lady who describes to us the elderly French companion that she recently met in an antique shop. Because of the age difference she joins a support group run by Mrs Berliner- Mauer, familiar to some as the woman who, in real – but bizarre – life, is married to, as the translation of her surname bears out, the Berlin Wall. As an aside, I have to add that Mrs B-M is quoted as saying, “The Great Wall of China’s attractive, but he’s too thick – my husband is sexier.”

As the show goes on we deal with Envy, portrayed as a nosey neighbour, Pride, as a politician with the style of Margaret Thatcher and the speaking ability of George W Bush and Greed, in which Tarett plays not one, but two, men simultaneously.

One of the funniest of the sketches is entitled Wrath, depicted as a Welsh classroom assistant. She is not angry at the children though, she’s angry at the story she has to read to them – Little Red Riding Hood. As soon as the teacher leaves the room she sets about telling her group of five year olds, with no holds barred, exactly what she thinks of it.

In an expletive filled tirade, she tears the story to pieces and leaves the children in no doubt as to the stupidity of a young girl who walks alone in the woods, tells a wolf exactly where her Grandmother lives and then doesn’t recognise that the Granny in the bed is actually a “F**king dog in a dress.”

The shorts bursts of music between the sketches, that fill the time while she changes costumes, ensure that Tarett’s show runs smoothly and seamlessly, with just enough time for the audience to compose themselves before the next hilarious sketch.

Finally we get to Sloth, and it is now that Tarett picks up the guitar that has rested in the corner throughout the show and, once again a la Victoria Wood, finishes with a song or two. The line, “I don’t want to watch The One Show, but I can’t find the remote” indicative of the theme.

The show has now finished its Brighton run but can be seen later in the year in Edinburgh and, as she exclusively revealed after the show, in the West End at the Arts Theatre on July 1^st so, forget whatever else you have planned– go and see this brilliant show!