Sarah Kendall, The Pleasance, Edinburgh

Element of surprise eludes technical maestro, but where's the surprise?

Julian Hall
Tuesday 24 August 2004 00:00 BST
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The closest Sarah Kendall gets to being an ice-maiden are the ice cubes she hands out to her sweltering audience.

An engaging host, Kendall takes us on a tour of the things that irk her, catching someone's eye when she is eating a banana, being stuck at parties trying to avoid small talk, the expectations of women raised by Gangsta rap. During the latter routine she delivers a line about the rapper 50cent being known as "approximately 29p" over here; "That's technically hilarious," she says to an audience who laugh to indicate they know that joke belongs to the wider consciousness. This is the thing about Sarah Kendall: she is technically quite good but not very surprising.

She underlines her derivative nature with her "ad breaks" where she delivers mildy amusing takes on L'Oreal and Burger King ads among others. For the most part, she makes a good job of going over old ground. Her powers of imitation are best illustrated when she closes, pretending to play the harmonica on Stevie Wonder's "For Once In My Life", using her mobile phone. It shouldn't work but it does.

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