Leav­ing Circa on Wed­nes­day after the open­ing night of Olive Cop­per­bot­tom, one of the many things I was feel­ing was deep regret that it was the very first of Penny Ashton’s shows that I’d seen, and I’d missed so many oth­ers.  Ashton is a bright light.  Her energy, her wit, and her joy were incan­des­cent through­out an hour and a half of non-stop action.  She clearly loves what she does, and the audi­ence loves her.  We clapped and laughed help­lessly from start to fin­ish, genu­inely entranced as she wove her story.

Dick­ens was a clev­er man with a wicked sense of humour, and this homage to him was right on the money.  The char­ac­ters Ashton has cre­ated could live in any of Dick­ens’ tales, and the nar­rat­ive was true to his for­mula of good v evil, com­edy of errors, and class divi­sion, without ever being for­mu­laic.  An orphan with an unknown fath­er nav­ig­ates poverty, betray­al, and a prom­ising career on the stage, while remain­ing the ingenue sweet­heart that we root for (even while we know she has to win through in the end – it’s a fairytale after all!).  It’s fast and smart and clev­erly ref­er­en­tial without being deriv­at­ive (HOW?)

Ashton switched between char­ac­ters smoothly and rap­idly, with clear dif­fer­ences between voice and phys­ic­al­ity, and we imme­di­ately knew who was doing what des­pite her speed of deliv­ery.  She broke the fourth wall with sly asides, or when there was a rare short cir­cuit on her lines or with the sound cues, bring­ing us along with the fun rather than let­ting it turn embar­rass­ing.  She flir­ted and teased and just enjoyed the rela­tion­ship devel­op­ing between us, her, and her char­ac­ters, and by God, we enjoyed it too.

The set and tech ele­ments were pretty simple, a bare stage with a chest, a table, and a chair, and that enabled the scene to change eas­ily without any faff­ing with props.  The music was a fun ele­ment; Ashton and Rob­bie Ellis filked songs over clas­sic­al favour­ites, which allowed us to focus on the lyr­ics against famil­i­ar melody.  Ashton’s voice, too, was strong and accur­ate, and the music felt like an extra east­er egg for us.

It was Rol­lick­ing.  It was a Romp.  It was an unstop­pable freight train from the get-go and I loved every moment of it.  I exhort every­one to go and see it.  You’ll laugh and cheer at this tre­mend­ous per­form­ance from an abso­lute star, and hope­fully it will bring a little sun­shine into these bleak times.

Olive Cop­per­bot­tom con­tin­ues for a won­der­fully long sea­son til Decem­ber 4th at Circa 2.  And I may have to go see it again.