THEATRE REVIEW: Outside In - Gulliver's Lounge, Manchester.

“Outside In” is a one-woman show filled with gentle humour and a keen sense of the ridiculous. Presented by Micheal Jacob, this performance was at Gulliver’s Lounge, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.

Writer and performer Ilaria Passeri had set the stage with a clothes rack of outfits, and one solitary chair. Having made herself comfortable on the chair, she explained the problem to the audience in her sweet-voiced, understated way: she wanted to join a gang. With that thought hanging in the air – she did not look like motorcycle gang material – she began at the beginning, with her childhood.

The impression given was that everything she told us is true, did happen to her in real life, and is not in the slightest bit exaggerated. (She was using her own name, for example, not a character’s.) Passeri has a gift for describing things that to other people would seem far too colourful to be plausible, but in Passeri’s delivery are just normal, everyday occurrences.

The outfits on the rack were brought in from time to time, such as her Brownie uniform (the bits that could still fit on her), her Frida Kahlo overalls for pretentious poetry nights, and her Christmas Elf costume. Passeri’s search for a gang to join had been thwarted since she was six. Her description of her drunken and divorced Italian father trying to kidnap her from the Brownie hall mid-meeting was performed with loud and authentically Italian-sounding flourishes. Once at university studying drama, she had two sets of student gangs to bring to life: the pretentious poet set, and the vacuous sexy girl set. Passeri somehow managed to sustain a probationary membership with both groups right into adulthood, without actually being either type herself. (Don’t ever go to a naked yoga session run by a vegan cult.)

This led her into other adventures, such as being Sparklechops the Elf one Christmas at the Arndale Centre. Passeri was mercilessly detailed in her descriptions on what really occurred in the Father Christmas hut – and apparently there is a child out there named Ambi Pur Air, after the air freshener. She also went on holiday to Dubai with the vacuous girl set, and nearly ended up a prince’s concubine. Back at home in Salford, she started performing her short stories at spoken word nights, where the audience would finger-click instead of clap if they liked her.

The audience tried to finger-click their appreciation at the end, but that’s actually quite hard to do. So we just clapped loudly instead.

Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 25.7.23