★★★★★

“reporting from inside the American Dream by someone who got out”

There are two kinds of Brits who come home from Los Angeles: the ones who talk about the light, and the ones who talk about the traffic. Ambrosine Davies has written a third account that’s a lot more accurate. L.A. Baby, her solo hour at Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival, compresses nine years in So. Cal. into sixty minutes. For audience members who are themselves L.A. returnees, this is twenty-five years of therapy delivered in an hour.

Davies eschews both the Los Angeles of the postcard and the version usually portrayed in British comedy. Instead, she presents the city of the relentless audition, the diner shift lost over an order of eggs benedict, of the nannying job for a family in the midst of narcissistic divorce shenanigans. Davies lived it. Anyone in the audience who has loved and resented a place in equal measure will relive every beat with her.

Davies writes and performs, with Eduardo Barreto directing. The entire hour runs on a single governing instinct: let the audience laugh first, then take the floor away. The opening stretch is very funny, assembled from the small humiliations of the working actor: the auditions requiring a smaller version of yourself, the jobs taken to fund the jobs you actually want. Davies is a precise mimic. The Californian voices she conjures, the agents, the employers, the casting assistants, are recognisable people rather than accents. She resists the easy contempt a British audience would have lapped up.

The turn, when it arrives, is not signposted. The boyfriend situation shifts from difficult to abusive to mortally dangerous in the usually incremental fashion. The room is still laughing when Davies reaches the point of being stalked, receiving death threats and calculating whether to carry a gun on the school run. It’s a real achievement not to change the show’s genre halfway through. The comedy becomes the mechanism by which the horror is delivered.

The staging is deliberately spare, which suits a piece that has travelled from Edinburgh. Storytelling carries the weight. Lighting and sound (by Eliska Van Lelyveld) unobtrusively but effectively mark the border between funny and frightening. The glow of flashing police lights forces our heroine out of her self-delusion that everything is ok.

The compression is the only cost. Nine years into sixty minutes means the early Los Angeles material gets room to breathe while the events that actually drove Davies home arrive at a run. A longer version of this show is surely waiting in the wings. It would be a harder watch.

L.A. Baby is billed as dark comedy, which undersells it considerably. It is reporting from inside the American Dream by someone who got out. It’s impossible to look away.

IONESCO/DINNER AT THE SMITHS

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“a deliciously served celebration of the strangeness of ordinary life”

To attempt to out-absurd the absurdity of Eugène Ionesco strikes one as an absurd challenge to undertake. Writer and director Marianne Badrichani fearlessly takes on the task with her production of “Ionesco/Dinner at the Smiths’” and succeeds brilliantly, not only by paying homage to the playwright’s unique blend of surrealism and notions of the ‘anti play’, but by making it instantly accessible. The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ can often be considered a touch niche, but Badrichani’s interpretation can be enjoyed by anybody who, A) likes a good night out at the theatre and B) is up for a good laugh. The latter, in fact, should come as a trigger warning – it will have you in stitches (I saw the show just a week after open surgery, and was laughing so hard in places that I feared my still-fresh stitches would come undone).

Co-adapted by Bradrichani, with Edith Vernes, “Ionesco/Dinner at the Smiths’” draws from interviews with Ionesco, and a few of his plays, most notably “The Bald Soprano”. In addition, we are treated to original conversations, musings, debates, arguments, theories, poetry and movement that seamlessly blend into Ionesco’s own writing; rhythmically and ideologically. The result is a deliciously served celebration of the strangeness of ordinary life and the limitations of language that, I am sure, Ionesco would be absurdly proud of. Be prepared to have your sense of reality and logic completely undermined. There is, after all, a written proviso in the programme stating that a doctor is in service in case of existential crisis.

The premise is set up before we enter the space. A willowy butler (Suzy Kohane) meets and greets us, inviting us into the home of Mr and Mrs Smith. Kohane is the epitome of cool, but with torrents of eccentricities sloshing around beneath the surface. Having been handed a glass of wine, we are led to our seats around a long dinner table. At opposite ends are Mr Smith (Sean Rees) and Mrs Smith (Lucy Russell). They talk nonsense. Of course they do. There are enough dramatic pauses, though, for us to take in and appreciate the attention to detail in our surroundings. Lydie Drouillet’s set has more than a touch of René Magritte. The upturned sconces of the candelabras, apples instead of candles, a backwards clock on the wall. There are even visual references to Ionesco’s other works.

But so far, we are still in ‘The Bald Soprano’ territory. The Smiths’ guests arrive – Mr and Mrs Martin (David Mildon and Edith Vernes respectively). They are dressed identically to their hosts. They arrive late and, ignoring the Smiths at first, launch straight into a private conversation as though they are strangers to each other. Bit by bit they flirtatiously discover coincidences and similarities, until they eventually recognise they are, in fact, married. The ensuing dialogue between the four of them spirals deeper into hilarity and banality. Each actor delivers their lines with impeccable timing and pitch, and every gesture, tic and expression is spot on. There is more than a hint of Monty Python (who, of course, were profoundly influenced by Ionesco) as logic breaks down further and linguistic convention is sent up higher and higher.

There is still time for a serious word or two, however. Slipping out of his jacket, Rees intermittently switches from Mr Smith into playing Ionesco himself, interviewed by his fellow cast members. These are short bursts, yet full of concise insight into Ionesco’s modus operandi and, with significant poignancy, his views on the ‘contagion’ of fascism. That is a whole other story, but in a few short lines, sentiments are clearly outlined.

Then it’s back to the party. The menu continues to dish up further courses of wordplay, wit and mindboggling silliness. We are invited to momentarily wear blindfolds and just listen instead – while other senses are also catered to. A fire chief arrives (Mildon at his most bonkers), disappointed at the lack of a fire to tackle. Nevertheless, a fire-themed poem is recited as consolation. A song is sung, and a few more twisted truisms and anti-aphorisms punctuate the proceedings. All the while our grins our getting wider, yet beneath the humour we are still aware of the odd pertinent message burrowing its way into our consciousness.

The show ends where it started – sort of – giving the impression of a cycle. The temptation is to remain in our seats to see if it all starts over. I could quite happily watch it again (under my surgical team’s orders though… I would rather the side-splitting comedy remain a figure of speech, not a literal medical emergency). It would be absurd to turn down an invitation to Dinner at the Smiths.

Tag Archives: Riverside Studios

L.A. BABY

★★★★★

Riverside Studios

L.A.BABY

Riverside Studios

★★★★★

“reporting from inside the American Dream by someone who got out”

L.A.BABY

Riverside Studios

Reviewed on 25th August 2026

by Elizabeth Botsford

Photography by Angela Milton

L.A. BABY

L.A. BABY

L.A. BABY

IONESCO/DINNER AT THE SMITHS

★★★★

Riverside Studios

IONESCO/DINNER AT THE SMITHS

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“a deliciously served celebration of the strangeness of ordinary life”