2011 Edinburgh Fringe
His N Hers review
O...kay. Where to start...
I hate being harsh but I have to be honest. The double bill of Luisa Omielan & James Redmond was fine. For one of them at least.
Redmond was decent but I'll get to his set later. The first act, Luisa Omielan, just wasn't funny. Nothing more than a load of 'funny voices', unimaginative sequences containing very little material, and a tedious, dreary, long routine about the accents of cows. An English cow moos like this. A Scottish cow moos like this. An Irish cow moos like this. Could it get any worse?
Yes. She rounds it off with a Welsh cow to complete the set. As soon as she did an 'English cow', you just knew where it was going and how painfully predictable it was going to be. It surely couldn't get any worse than this?
Well, yes it could. She then instructed the audience to shout out random countries and she'd do the accent. Jamaica, Spain, Poland. I was very tempted to shout the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
There was the odd smile from me but I seriously just couldn't get into this at all. She finished her set by singing a Cher song about a random thing suggested from the crowd. Jelly Babies was shouted out. She then proceeded to sing an improvised and exasperatingly dreadful 3 minute song about Jelly Babies as Cher. Need I have to explain my thoughts on this?
She may have absolutely stormed her previous shows, but all I do know is that this was just dire on the day of this review. Had she been alone on the bill I would be very tempted give my lowest ever star rating. On a good day I might have given her half a star for effort.
The second act, ex-Hollyoaks actor James Redmond, saved things a little. His set wasn't spectacular by any means but it did have a few fun little stories regarding his 'z-list' celebrity status (a label he happily admits to).
He seems happy to make a mockery of his career in return for a few laughs. There are some likeable pieces in his set, including what not to say to a famous person, observations on when you know your career is down the drain, and a sequence involving a rather harsh phone prank on his brother. He is much more engaging than Osmadiu, but probably doesn't have the potential to fill an hour by himself yet.