In comedy terms, Elf Lyons has always been less of a thoroughbred, more of a breed apart – never more so than with Horses, which considers the world, and her personal history, through an equine lens. Part-clown, part-mime and part- (as ever with Lyons, and more pointedly here) overgrown child at play, the show introduces us to a stable’s worth of horses through history, animated by a comic really putting her long limbs, big eyes and animal mimicry skills through their paces.
So far, so diverting – but Lyons undergirds the bestial character-comedy with lip-synced interviews with her family, recalling the imaginative childhood landscapes of Elf and her siblings, in which horses played a prominent role.
