Patrick Turpin: To Me, You Are Perfect

About as perkily palatable a show as you can imagine with narcissism and even incest at its core, To Me, You Are Perfect is a light-hearted, enjoyably self-absorbed hour from blithe fool Patrick Turpin.

Borne of yearning for love, as he laments his few, ever-decreasing-in-length relationships, Turpin splits his personality in two to address the crowd. Turps is his chummily confident, “am I right guys?” persona, offering commentary on the fey, prancing Theatre Boy, who bathetically raises his quest to find someone to epically pretentious proportions.

Although he starts with an amusing stunt that could be genuine, supposedly leaving notebooks around London in a contrived attempt to snare an amour, Turpin capably blurs his real life and unhinged fantasy. This is summarised in his father's weary voice on a recording, wondering: “Patrick, is this for your next show?” The plot of Love Actually and Jeremy Irons' bizarre views on gay marriage are stretched to the ridiculous extremity of their logic, with Turpin compromising his confident “heteronormative” strutting as his reasoning grows ever more desperate.

Like most relationships, To Me, You Are Perfect is somewhat messy and not always coherent. And of course, it's as much about Turpin reassuring himself about his theatrical vocation as it is about romantic fulfilment, reaching for the resolve to persist in the face of indifference. There are some witty, deceptively self-aware lines sprinkled throughout, some amusing little playlets, and he's a likeable berk, laying his dignity on the line without hesitation.