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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 254617" data-attributes="member: 23"> Victoria At The Albert Live (continued)The second act is broken up a little more. It kicks off with the live debut (in O’Dramavision, at least) of Stacey Leanne Payne: star of Luxury Liner (first and most recently seen in All The Trimmings). Vic’s usually spot-on with picking out the characteristics of the people she satirises, so the more I see of this backstabbing, self-centred narcissist who plays up her Yorkshire background to appeal more humble and real, the more I have to wonder about Jane McDonald. She’s been on Loose Women, so that suggests Vic had her number. Vic and her team could have had a field day with that show, knowing how she feels about tacky, poorly presented TV series. In fact she gets stuck into a number of them at the beginning of the second act proper; from Trisha to Jerry Springer and the gardening shows to which she was subjected when recuperating from her operation. She also talks about an episode of All-Star Family Fortunes that was made up of people from makeover teams (“Stars are people like Madonna or Elizabeth Taylor. You can’t be a “star” if your only claim to fame is that you’ve got your own spirit level”). And her description of Touch The Truck was so abysmally bad that I thought she’d made it up, but it turns out to be a real show. Then she takes aim at daytime TV adverts for compensation claims, stairlifts and the like:It’s another very conversational act, which is such an art. It’s a long show - almost two hours - but it feels as though Vic is just coming on and chatting. Even at the end it almost seems as though she’s just warming up, simply because she makes it all seem so effortless and relaxed.There’s a bit of recycled material, such as talking about kids’ names and such. But it mostly feels fresh and right for where Vic was in 2001. It also has an updated reference to something she’d immortalised in An Audience With…It’s a really nice reference for recognising that the audience is going to be familiar with some of her work and tapping into that to give context to her changing outlook between then and now.There are no less than two encores. In the first, Stacey Leanne Payne makes a return to sing Shagadoo. It’s fun enough, but I do miss Vic singing as Vic while playing piano. It’s about the only thing that would have added to my enjoyment. The second has a twist on the exercise routine, this time Vic plays the grungy Pat who is standing in for Marilyn. This may not be the first concert that comes to mind when thinking of Vic’s live shows. But in many ways it really should be as it’s her most heartfelt and truthful. Which means it’s also one of her funniest.</blockquote>

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