Lolly Adefope: Lolly 2

Lolly Adefope begins her hour with a coruscating and justified attack on some of the simple-minded and supposedly more-liberal-than-thou reviews she received for last year’s show. Lolly 2 both rejects and responds to those write-ups, finding humour in the limiting expectations that are placed on some performers. But that makes this sound troublingly worthy, which it isn’t. Instead, this character sketch shows rattles through a succession of well-conceived skits, each one successfully conjuring up a coherent comic world from well-observed details.

Her American characters don’t quite fly to the glorious comic extent of the UK ones, perhaps because her skills in performing people who struggle to maintain control of language are better suited to repressed and inarticulate Brits. And that’s where the comedy shines, mining for humour the sort of social situations that require characters such as a "cultural awareness coordinator"; or a call centre drone who has to put on a brave face while unthinkingly regurgitating mundane scripts. There’s a merciless takedown of the faked and desperate bonhomie of university welcome events which might have you squirming if you studied at Loughborough.

A recurring gag concerns the recent palaver over the casting of a black actor as Hermione in the stage version of Harry Potter. Lolly both skewers the idiocy that surrounded the debate, and highlights the issues of access it represents. But all this is done knowingly lightly, allowing the performances to shine. And they do, in this joyous hour that displays her skills in comically and sympathetically capturing the ways people talk and move, inviting laughter of recognition.