Dizney Rascal: the hit comedy that sends up Walt's princesses

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/12/rebecca-humphries-dizney-rascal-interview

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‘I used to beg my mum to get me the Belle dress from Beauty and the Beast,” says Rebecca Humphries. “And she never let me have it. But now I’m 27 and doing a show about Disney – and I get to wear as many dresses as I want.”

The show is Dizney Rascal and when the actor and comedian performed it at last year’s Edinburgh free fringe, it had what may be the most instant success in comedy history. The show takes a tour of Humphries’ obsession with the Disney canon – sending up the songs, poking fun at the dodgy politics, and interspersing video footage of her encounters, in her flat, with various come-to-life Disney princesses. She had never worked as a comedian before and had only once visited the fringe. She booked a festival slot on impulse and did all the producing, posters and flyering herself. Then the show opened and, she says, “we turned people away on the first day. People loved it. It was such a brilliant experience.” The show sold out. Having wished upon a star, Humphries’ dream came true.

Well, partly – she does have other ambitions. A diverse career is, she says, “all I ever wanted”. Last month, Humphries starred in the hippest theatre event of 2014: Pomona, the dystopian smash hit from hotshot playwright Alistair McDowall. Humphries played a prostitute fleeing for her life in a world where women are farmed for their babies, and the Observer’s Susannah Clapp put her stoical performance in the top 10 of 2014. It’s certainly a long way from a crowd-pleasing comedy about wasp-waisted princesses and singing warthogs.

Humphries plays down distinctions between the worlds of acting and standup, though. “Inherently, everything is funny,” she says, over a posh coffee in a hotel in the West End of London. “A lot of pain and suffering in the world is beaten with humour. Good actors, directors and writers know that.” And standup has made her a better actor, she says. “Having had the experience of trying my own stuff out in front of a live audience, and getting it wrong and re-doing it, I can now go into a rehearsal room and say, ‘I’m going to scrap what I did yesterday and do something different today.’ If I get told that’s useless, I’m no longer mortally wounded.”

It’s not that Humphries, who trained at the London Academy of Music and Drama, was frustrated as an actor, but she does admit to a late-youth sense of drift. And those feelings – “Oh God, I don’t know what to do with my life. I’m 26 and all I like is Disney, Taylor Swift and One Direction. I’m a child in an adult’s body” – directly inspired Dizney Rascal. Key to its success is its balance between sending up and celebrating Disney. There’s a brilliant pastiche of formulaic Disney princess songs (credit to Jo Chichonska, Humphries’ musical director) and much mickey-taking of Disney’s black-and-white moral universe. But affection is the top note. “I know all the problems with Disney. But to do a show that was wholly satirical would be denying what I loved so much about it growing up.”

Hopefully that affection will keep Disney off her back. Notwithstanding the Z in its title, or the minimal appearance of actual Disney material in Humphries’ show, the company is famously uptight about copyright. I wonder if the rights issue explains Humphries’ failure, so far, to find a London home for the show. Surprisingly, Soho theatre, where most fringe comedy migrates, has spurned Dizney Rascal, which seems as surefire a commercial hit as you’re ever likely to find.

No matter – Humphries is also currently starring in Cockroaches, ITV2’s new sitcom about England as a post-nuclear wasteland, scripted by Bad Education writer Freddie Syborn. Among a large cast of comedy faces (Jack Whitehall, Rich Hall, Caroline Quentin), Humphries stars as a “Tory gal” caring for the demented ex-PM, played by Downton Abbey’s Robert Bathurst. She wastes no time trying to pretend Cockroaches is remotely sophisticated, though does say: “The audience that is supposed to enjoy it will definitely enjoy it.”

Coming hot on the heels of Pomona and Dizney Rascal, Cockroaches contributes richly to that varied career she has strived so hard for. “I spent the last five years since drama school going, ‘Am I comedy? Am I drama? What is it that I should be focusing on?’” She gives a laugh. “But the last year has taught me that if I want a diverse career, the only person who can make it happen is me.”

• Cockroaches is on ITV2 on 13 January. Dizney Rascal is at the Otherplace, Brighton, 17 January, then touring.

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