Edinburgh comedy award-nominated in 2017, Elf Lyons can’t be accused of treading the conventional career path since. None of her shows ever remotely resembles the next. Created with the deaf artist Duffy, Heist is a part-improvised, largely mimed and entirely chaotic comic play about – well, what is it about, exactly? Guinea pigs. Bank robbery. An “evil alien nonce”. I spent a fair portion of the show wondering what and why, until Lyons pipes up with “none of this show makes sense. It’s just made out of my favourite signs from Level One [BSL]!”
Aha. That explains the eccentric content. As for the precarious form of a show that doesn’t seem to know whether it’s scripted or improvised – well, that’s all part of the ramshackle fun, as Elf berates Duffy between (and during) scenes about his lax narrative discipline. No point pretending the story is clear, or that it adds up to much more than randomly generated nonsense. But it doesn’t lack jeopardy. With car chases, abseils down tower blocks and severed testicles, Heist might be Elf and Duffy, but it’s definitely not ’elf and safety.
