The Stage

The Pitch

Published Tuesday 28 August 2007 at 18:20 by William McEvoy

The Pitch is a comic and performing tour de force in which Peter Houghton plays a whole cast of characters in a dramatized film pitch to a group of media executives.

There is great invention and extraordinary physicality in Houghton’s highly energetic performance, shifting between characters, morphing from Catherine Zeta-Jones to Russell Crowe and Clint Eastwood with a quickly established repertoire of gesture, accents and postures.

Houghton provides sound effects too, from the sound of music and machine guns to the ululating of groups of mountain bandits. Parody and satire join hands to exaggerated comic effect and the mockery of film genres and cliches is very funny.

A slight qualm about some of the cultural stereotypes Houghton draws on is the only fly in the ointment. While film stars are individuated, the Chinese or Arabs are sketched in by mimicry of their accents, which is often a little crude. But it’s a minor gripe in a performance which is a virtuoso piece of acting, delivered with great bravura, and which deserves to be seen further afield than the fringe.