Max Prentice’s one man show, Mr Boy: The Beauty Contest for Boys, had its first night at the King’s Arms in Salford on July 9th. It’s a beauty pageant in which he is the presenter and plays all the would-be hopefuls. It’s fun.
After a brief introduction – he used to win the pageant, but the format changed and you now need a gimmick – he presented the 6 “boys”. They are wildly different, and comprise:
- A creepy office manager who is inducting new recruits and showing them round.
- The Frenchman, complete with red beret and fake accent. Also creepy.
- A crazy cowboy who ends up as a horse stealer.
- The Riddler. Really annoying.
- The Gibbon masquerading as human, and whose karaoke was fantastic.
- The rapping mayor, complete with backwards baseball cap. I wonder who he was thinking about…
My favourite was the Gibbon who’d been taken on by PWC.
It was an hour of undiluted hilarity, and with the impromptu rapping had us in fits. The audience voted for a winner, but the chairman in the front row overrode the decision. Boo hiss.
I didn’t quite understand the end, where he ended up being gunned down, but this is fringe after all.
It’s on for one more night in Manchester and is then moving to Edinburgh. It should do well.
Paul Schofield for Canal Street Online
Don’t forget to use you Canal Street VIP card at the bar.