At one stage in Love Sick I was doubled up with hysterical laughter in the front row, lost for breath.  It is always a transformative thing to laugh that much, and the memory exists as a warm glow – but somehow all this good feeling has to be communicated in a review that gets across some of the how, the why, and the structure of this very funny show.  It’s advertised as ‘clowning’ in the brochure, but these aren’t the grease-painted figures that haunted my childhood with their alarming bulbous noses. No, the two performers (Amalia Vitale and Stephen Sobale) are dressed in tight, satin-sheened costumes, with mobile, quizzical, very human faces staring out at the audience, with just that right mixture of naivety, disbelief, and eagerness to talk. They are aliens from a dying metropolis, which suffers in comparison with the worst bits of Croydon: they really are in trouble.  The description of their disease is painfully funny and surreal – you just know from the beginning that you are in for a good night. The overall conceit of the visiting aliens searching for love as the drug that cures works perfectly to contain the evening.

Their arrival on stage in their spaceship is a gentle gem of improvised comedy – the staccato Star Trek like orders clashing nicely with the swishing hands and noises that their giant collapsible laundry basket makes as it lands.   But it’s not just slapstick, it’s sharply observed comedy on the subject of love. They have vox-pop interviews that play over the sound system as people struggle to define what they mean by love. These have been carefully curated and ordered to build up their comic effect.  There is a lot of craft in this seemingly effortless clowning. They inspect texts to help them. I think it was the dating advice scene that kicked off the chain reaction laughter, but it might have been earlier, as the literally-taken advice was interrupted by an increasingly bizarre series of interjections.

All In blend their surreality into their performance – a recitation about love is interrupted by a bird-like squawk from Vitale and she held her head back and mouth open  so that her partner could feed her like a bird feeding its young. There were some great asides in this, it was funny in itself and it also fit the theme of love – which is the greater love, it seems to ask – dropping your half-chewed banana into your fledgling’s mouth, or receiving said half-chewed banana and swallowing it? I’m tempted to give the punch line, but it’s too good – I think my non-stop laughing started here.

Physically they are very adept, their dance routines are hilarious, and you are given, amongst other things, a giant cock and balls on stage (entirely tasteful, entirely tasteful), the chance to hurl ping pong ball sperm at a nervous egg, and lollypops. They make great use of ‘half dress’ in a scene where one side of their costume is a woman’s clothing, the other a man’s. This allows them to indulge in some lovely talk routines, swapping roles as man and woman continually – which is a great strength. So many shows like this could fall into the trap of allowing their male and female roles to become clichéd and they avoid this entirely by switching the genders they perform between them.  Their scripting is very tight, their ad-libs spot on, and, hallmark of great comedy, it was hard to tell with some gags whether they were scripted or unscripted, they always fitted in so well.  Well worth going to see to put a sizeable bit of joy into your life.