Elf Lyons - Horses

Nothing, I imagine, can fully prepare you for an evening in Elf Lyons company, not even - it turns out - an earlier evening in her company. I first saw her performing a show called Raven, which confusingly was about Stephen King, rather than Edgar Allen Poe, and was really about her familial relationships. Unnerving, atmospheric and quite brilliant, by the end of show I thought I had the measure of her but, as she said at the beginning of this one, she likes each show to be different. Well, she certainly achieved that ambition.

One significant change was the degree of audience participation. No sooner had I assured my pal we were safe on the front row - she's not that king of comic, said I, with misplaced confidence - than I was lighting her imaginary cigarette with my imaginary lighter, after which she took it off me and lobbed into the back of a pleasingly full Stage 2. Cross aisle sword fighting and faux aggression followed, with the audience completely on side from the get go. All very jolly, if a tad unnerving for us on the front row, wondering what was expected of us next. Being shot by a wayward marksman turned out to be the answer, before said marksman turned their sights on the subject in hand. After all, they shoot horses, don't they?

The birth of a foal that opened the "proper" show swept away all that silliness with a mime of such studied delicacy that, absurdly given the context, I found it quite moving. Elf Lyons had left the building and the show was being populated by horses. Daftness was never far away - the Trojan horse spewing forth a pair of volunteers quickly spiralled into chaos,  while Pegasus 's visit to a shoe shop with his mother Medusa was an object lesson in inspired lunacy as mum kept turning folk into stone. However, things took a darker turn when a race horse is injured at the Grand National, and darker still when a Warhorse is put out of a misery he doesn't feel. These individual scenes were loosely tied together - the girl thrown down a well by a psychotic pony is then seen crawling across the Aintree racecourse - but aside from the odd call back are best imagined as stand alone sketches. Sandwiched between them are the disembodied voices of Lyon's family, disconcertingly lip synced, and it's during these that we come to the heart of the matter. With no discernible trajectory, the evening felt at times more like a fever dream, albeit a very entertaining one, but cross reference the weirdness with childhood reminiscence and it became more akin to the evolution of playtime. This was the adult Elf Lyons trying to recapture the lost art of childhood fantasy, gambolling over mop and bucket in talcum powder mist.

The performance closed with an invitation to join her on stage for a trot round the obstacle course. Norwich, I'm sorry to report, was the first venue to turn her down. We will, no doubt,  join Bath and Leicester in the hall of shame. She was sad about this, not least, I suspect, as it messed up an intended ending. I'd suggest, however, that Norwich's reluctance was born not out of disinterest but rather because of the spell she had weaved. Horses were her childhood game, and the trance inducing circles in which she moved acted like a lo-fi time machine. Had Molten Lava, Timber, Crazy Climbers or Fisherman and Fish been on offer I'd have been first up, as these were the games I played with my brother.  Joining her on the race course would have been merely performative - I was far happier reflecting on an astonishing performance that combined great artistry, superb mime and perhaps most importantly, an acute sense of fun.

I'd have happily left things there, but in an oddly structured night, we reconvened after a short break for what was euphemistically termed stand up, but was really an extended cosy chat. Now dressed in her civvies, Lyons explained this was her warm up routine, shifted to the end of the evening so as to maintain the illusion she was a horse. The fear was surprisingly well founded, but to my mind the remedy back fired. To be clear, she proved to be delightful, and very funny, company, but I couldn't help feeling the magic created during the main show was dissipated. I'm not sure I wanted to peek behind the curtain and find out the ferocious force of nature that assailed me for an hour was a grounded human being with a sharp line in self-deprecating good humour.

Unique is an overstretched word but I struggle to think of anyone close to Elf Lyon. There were hints of the pathos that Bryonny Kimmings brings to the stage and shades of Lucy McCormick's fearless chaos. Stewart Lee's willingness to deconstruct a performance came to mind, as did Rik Mayall's gyrating hips, but comparison never comes close to the experience of witnesses first-hand the startling brilliance and endless invention of a performer that continually pushes the boundaries while remaining consistently hilarious. This was, in case I haveng been clear enough, an outstanding night of well structured, faultlessly executed comedy/performance art and credit is due to the Theatre Royal for opening up a space for such an exhilarating, genre defying show.

I never did get my imaginary lighter back, though.