WEER Review: Walthamstow Is The New Soho. Clowning Is The New Rock And Roll

Walthamstow is the new Soho. Clowning is the new rock and roll.

For all the deserved fanfare of the reawakening of the palatial Soho Theatre Walthamstow, there is a niggling concern before the curtain rises on American clown Natalie Palamides. The stage she's appearing on tonight is the size of the entire upstairs room where we last saw her in the OG Soho Theatre. Walthamstow's Moorish whale of a venue threatens to inhale promising comics, half-digest them in the imposing darkness, then flob them out onto the Hoe Street kerb.

We needn't have worried.

Employing a vaudeville skit that's as old as the hills — Palamides splits her outfit/act down the middle to play two star-crossed lovers, Mark and Christina — WEER is a send-up of 1990s American movie romances, all coincidental run-ins en route to high-powered jobs, icky tropes ("I don't believe in God." "Well he believes in you.") and steamy shower scenes set to Aerosmith ballads.

The cavernous space quickly becomes of riot of props that Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer would be envious of: life-sized stags swoop from the rafters. Car headlights swirl all over the shop. An entire bedroom is yanked in from the wings in one go. Invisible taxis splash up very real puddles of water. Primarily, Palamides — surely one of the great contemporary clowns — makes herself the prop; a brutally balletic pas de deux with herself. In spite of the utterly daft humour (the strand about Mark's great grandfather seems to be out of nowhere but ends up being instrumental, and is all the funnier because of it), you fully buy into the illusion you're watching two people argue, hit each other and f**k. Some wry audience interaction — the schizophrenic clown making it impossible for one audience member to make the right choice — only bolsters this. Tear-inducingly funny and at times jaw-droppingly shocking, WEER is something exquisite — Romeo and Juliet meets Looney Tunes.

As for owning the stage, Palamides might as well lug it home with her on the Victoria line.

Natalie Palamides: WEER, Soho Theatre Walthamstow, until Saturday 10 May 2025