Birmingham Symphony HallThe veteran comic´s enduring ability to captivate a crowd saves a best-of evening that occasionally descends into tediumThey´re a real pop-will-eat-itself phenomenon, these live shows by TV personalities. As with Griff Rhys Jones a few months back, so now with Joanna Lumley: a small-screen celeb taking to the stage to talk through clips of things we´ve already seen them do on TV (top-price tickets: £62.50). They seldom make for gripping live performance, and sometimes - tonight, for example - descend into tedious love-ins, as Lumley fields written questions (`Will you marry me?`, `Can I have a kiss?`) submitted by her crowd.The entire second act is given over to these questions, mediated by Lumley´s sometime TV producer Clive Tulloh. You might think the Q&A format would occasion spontaneity on Lumley´s part. And so it does, to a very small degree. The rest, though, is contrivance, as the audience´s questions are corralled to fit around her precooked anecdotes and clips. Continue reading...
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