Kevin Tomlinson: Seven Ages, Exeter Northcott, 10th June ‘08
By Jenna Richards
When a performer walks on stage and informs you the show is entirely improvised using random sentences generated by the audience you wonder what the evening has in store.
In Seven Ages Kevin Tomlinson takes the seven stages of life as set out by Shakespeare in As you like it and improvises characters at each stage of life using anecdotes from his life and the lives of the audience.
The unseen audience ‘script’ is scattered on the floor as the audience is taken on a journey though infancy, childhood, work, justice and wisdom, retirement and second childishness. Tomlinson dons a series of masks, gently encourages audience participation and portrays a story that is both hilarious and surprisingly coherent.
At intervals Kevin picks an unseen audience generated line off the floor and works it into the show, some fit extremely well others are a little disjoined but all are impressively worked into the character portrayal and all raise a laugh from the audience.
This sometime serious but mostly comedic performance sees Tomlinson bounding around the stage changing characters with ease, encouraging audience participation and leaves us all with a grin on our faces. It is Tomlinson’s ability to slip with ease into an improvised character and the randomly generated lines that make the show. Each show is different and on this occasion no line raised a bigger laugh than the last of the show. An old man took us back through the stages of his life then said: “If I don’t make it through the night, put on my gravestone….” picked a line form the pile and finished with: “…Mummy are you wearing your hairy knickers today?!”