Love, Sharks & Frenching: a hot date w/ Lou Laurence
This was one of my last picks, another solo show, but she won me over just by poking her head out from the side curtain. She continued to win me over with music, storytelling and loads of humor about dating, dating apps and love.
I have not had to date in forty years but I didn’t want the show to end. SPOILER ALERT Lou you are delightful
We witnessed an energetic and highly entertaining show by Lou Lawrence. She is an engaging quick witted performer whose talent for musical improvisation is amazing. Definitely worth seeing.
Innovative woman with a great singing voice and strong representation of les deux cultures de Montreal. Has great talent and charm, but the show would benefit from a better premise and stronger story telling.
I loved this show. It was a great first date with Lou who soothed away the worries of the day with her sultry voice, and her engaging and fun tales. Be prepared to fall in love.
If, like me, you lack the social skills to get a hot day with a sultry-voiced beautiful singer in Montréal... thank goodness for Lou.
Her show is as light and delightful as her music is deep and moving.
I loved this show! Sultry, silly, and satisfying. Would recommend to anyone who loves musical comedy and romance.
This is a woman with a powerful engaging singing voice that I would happily pay to hear perform in a club gig. Light, silly premise that allowed you play along with the pitfalls of first dates, combined with inventive song improvisation based on audience feedback. Oddly cathartic finale that was unexpected. Well recommended.
Lou Laurence, who wrote this piece and is performing it, has charm to burn and an appealingly deep and raspy singing voice. Overall, though, Love, Sharks & Frenching is only intermittently engaging.
The premise is that Laurence is conducting a scientific experiment about how to find surefire success in dating and romance, and she’s doing that by going on group dates with a series of audiences. The set-up works well enough but, around the time when she was pretending to French kiss the whole crowd, she was seriously losing me.
That’s because nothing was adding up to much. A lot of her text is really only a series of introductions to songs that aren’t, themselves, terrifically engaging.
There are oases: a couple of times, Laurence takes suggestions from the audience and improvises songs — about our vulnerabilities, for instance. These bits work because they’re skilled and because, as spectators, we’re finally being invited to play along in a meaningful way — which is always a good thing on a date.
(You can read all my reviews — including Fringe reviews — on my website, Fresh Sheet Reviews. Click the URL below.)
Lou Laurence exudes charm and delights in this fringe show! Her sultry voice and magnanimous presence make this a show to watch!