Teresa Livingstone: Delighted

Edinburgh Fringe – Just The Tonic

Teresa Livingstone’s Delighted is such a playfully sarcastic show where she seems to find new levels of social observationism to share with us. 

This is such a funny show in that Livingstone delivers laugh after laugh, constantly delighting us with her jokes and one-liners. Her chosen topics are mostly based in general commentary of the everyday and universal experiences, but she always finds a way to relate it back to both her and our experience of this phenomenon that she is describing, roping us into the fact that we’re laughing because we recognise exactly what she’s talking about, and we’re able to use our own familiarity with it to laugh at it. Overall and apart from being inherently funny, it’s just a well-structured show. Her segues between the straight stand-up and musical comedy happens seamlessly, the stand-up always setting up the songs. She has just quite a quietly dry humour that is conveyed entirely in her tone,  which just constantly surprises us with just how well she uses it to make everything so effortlessly funny. She just constantly has us in stitches just by saying the most innocuous thing. 

“Delightful and de-lovely”

Livingstone really has a marvellous and incredibly strong voice coupled with a creative writing style.  She captures the essence of what it is she’s trying to dissect, taking her songs in unexpected directions. The instrumentals is almost a mixture of traditional and light musical theatre, with some pop. In terms of lyrical and instrumental compositions, the songs are very sophisticated, and the humour is tied in throughout, never is there a line that doesn’t automatically get a laugh.

All in all, Livingstone’s Delighted is delightful and de-lovely. 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo Credit: Daniel James Shields