We sent our reviewer James to watch Davina Bentley: Dancing While Old

After an afternoon at the Fringe, as you find yourself waiting to go into the Cellar at the Pleasance Courtyard, feet aching and hoping your knees can still manage the stairs, it feels very apt that you’re heading to Davina Bentley’s Dancing While Old.

A former lawyer, Bentley has been working in comedy and producing online content for a number of years and is a warm and engaging performer. This, however, is her Edinburgh Fringe debut, and, diverting as it was for the most part, there do still seem to be a few bits to iron out to really make this show come to life.

Some of that may be on the marketing front. It was a full house, but potentially not quite the main demographic this piece is aimed at (including myself). The audience skewed slightly older and were not super-vocal, which can obviously make a gig tough. Also, there are a number of intangible elements that can change an audience’s perception of a comedian. For example, this wasn’t expressly billed as a work in progress or preview show, but Bentley was often still referring to notes, particularly at the beginning. To my mind, this, in and of itself, is no great sin and it didn’t have any real detrimental impact on the show, but it did feel to be one of the things that made the audience a little uncertain of it, at least in the beginning.

Also, from both the marketing and her social media, people may have been expecting more characters and sketch, but this was mostly straight stand up. Again, this was not an inherently bad thing, but I think it took us a short while to recalibrate. All this meant that, even in the close quarters of the Cellar, whilst there were very often contented ripples of laughter throughout the audience, it very seldom rose above that. This is a shame as Bentley is clearly a very experienced performer and I think with the right crowd, this material could hit really well.

There are a couple of moments of friendly, fun audience interaction in the show, based around the central premise that Henry VIII was 44 before he started doing much of what he is famous for (working out how to get rid of wives), so Davina still has 2 years to work out exactly what it is that she wants to be doing with her life. This is a nice conceit with sweet little additions, like holding a monkey to be Catherine of Aragon, but it seems mostly self-contained in these vignettes and to have little impact on the rest of the show. Again, this is unfortunate as these elements are clearly reflective of the thinking behind the show in the first place.

Although Dancing While Old might not have quite found its dancing feet just yet, it is still worth a quick two step over to the Pleasance to take a reel around the Cellar with a very likable performer.

Rating: ***’- 3.5 stars

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