4 / 5 Stars
If you come across Character Building Experience expecting a typical comedy set, you will be happily disappointed. Instead, what you get is an interactive Dungeons-&-Dragons-style quest where audience members get to have their say on what goes down in the village of Salvers Top. It sounds like it could be an utter train wreck, but instead proves to be a gem of a show. This conversational, erratic and bizarre hour of gameplay is utterly side-splitting, thanks in no small part to the charm of its three players.
Sasha Ellen is the Dungeon Master for the night, back at the Fringe following the show’s run at the festival in 2019 and her solo stand-up performance Pickle. The whole audience are welcome to interact in a number of ways, but playing the game is left largely to podcast regulars Vicky Hawley (“a lovely lesbian Hugh Grant”) and Ben Kavanagh. Their energy and enthusiasm, as well as some quick thinking, are brilliant to watch. They all bounce wonderfully off one another, encouraging viewers to laugh along with them as they get into increasingly bizarre scenarios.
Throw everything together, and you get more than the odd laugh. This is an endlessly pleasing, voraciously funny hour of unpredictable nonsense. From repairing broken romances to people’s rear ends falling off their bodies, you’ll be wondering what the hell is going on if you join even just a few minutes after the show kicks off. The opportunities to get involved are golden, and you will find great joy in forcing the players into increasingly strange situations. While working knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons would probably help you to make sense of it all, it is far from a requirement.
Character Building Experience feels like the ingenious result of pure boredom. The show itself predates lockdown, yet the format lends itself so well to an online escapade that it feels like a timely hour of joke-fuelled escapism. You’ll find yourself breaking out into smiles and laughter right from the word go. However, as Ellen says to close the show, “If you didn’t enjoy it, Tweet us anyway. We’re very lonely.”
Words by James Hanton.
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