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.