Pippa Evans interview: Crunched cabaret

Published on Saturday 25 July 2009 13:18

AT LAST year's Fringe, London-born actress and comic Pippa Evans was nominated for the If.comedy Best Newcomer Award. She attributes the attention to her display of two key emotions: loneliness and disappointment. Not her own loneliness and disappointment, you understand, but rather that of the characters that inhabited her debut solo sketch show.

The loose conceit of the show was that it was actually a meeting of a self-help group for lonely people. Ironically, the group's facilitator, a staring-eyed Kiwi called Granye, had only set up the group to counter her own loneliness. Most memorable of the group's motley members was Loretta Maine, a disturbed singer songwriter whose debut album, I Had Your Baby But I Threw It In The River, suggested that she hadn't quite got over her boyfriend leaving her. Set in a cut rate variety show for disgruntled conference delegates, this year's show travels similarly dystopian territory.

"It's a cabaret night but the funding has been slashed," says Evans. "Essentially, it's a night of entertainment run by a character called Julie Mansize. She used to perform in a double act but now performs on her own after her husband died. It's a cheery show."

The slightly worrying aspect of her shows is that Evans draws deeply on her own experiences for many of her scenarios. Despite having only graduated in drama and theatre arts from Birmingham University in 2004, she has managed to accumulate a CV which is rich in potential pathos. Playing the Donkey in an all-female version of Animal Farm, touring Italy as a clown and appearing in pantos in old folks' homes, have all given her extensive, if not glamorous, experiences to work with. This year's show has its roots in a charity in which Evans was previously involved.

"I used to work for a charity group that took old ladies on holiday. We would take them to end-of-the-pier shows where neither the performers nor the audience were that interested in being there but neither wanted to call a stop. No one wanted to say that nobody was enjoying it but that equilibrium was interesting.

"Everyone's nightmare is to be that lonely person that has no one to talk to or that performer working a hotel bar. Often the performers were really good, and you think, how did they end up doing this? What happened? You remember that it could happen to any of us."

Following on from her Newcomer nomination, such a fate looks unlikely for Evans. Sarah Millican may have scooped the actual gong but simply being nominated has boosted Evans' career.

"It opened millions of doors," she says. "I had been doing comedy for three years before then without really getting much interest. Suddenly, I had a really good agent and lots of meetings. I've just done four radio projects, recorded some TV and now I gig almost every night."

While the attention has been welcome, the nomination has meant that Evans has had to make some adjustments.

"It was quite terrifying. You get very comfortable doing the open mic circuit, turning up to the same places and playing to 20 people. In that situation, it won't matter if you aren't great on that night because no one will really remember who you are. Then suddenly you are doing rooms to 400 people and you have to up your game."

Given that Evans was singing Swanee to her grandmother at the age of four, a stage career always looked likely. Her mother was an incontinence therapist ("That always led to interesting dinner table conversations") and Pa Evans was in computers, but both were Am-Dram enthusiasts.

"I was brought up with old time music halls and doing pantos in church halls from the age of five or so," says Evans. "It was a big part of my background that always appealed to me. I am one of four children and while my parents never put us in performance school or anything like that, we were always in school plays and nativity plays or making up our own plays which we would put on and charge an entrance fee for."

Evans developed her talent for making people laugh as a way of deflecting attention from other aspects of herself.

"Until I was about 14, I was a fat boy or at least I looked like a fat boy. I think that being funny was a bit of a defence mechanism for me, so I ended up being a bit of a joker."

These days, it will take a long time in the make-up artist's chair before Evans looks like a fat boy but the funny bones are still there.

Pippa Evans: Your Evening's Entertainment, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh (0131-556 6550) 5-28 August, 6.20pm, www.edinburgh-festivals.com