Fresh from a run at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre, Natalie Palamides’s one-woman romcom WEER, returns to London. Palamides plays both sides of the couple; her left side is Kristina, and her right side is Mark, and her hair, makeup, and multiple costumes are all split down the middle.
Palamides’s performance is spectacular. By turning a different side of her body to the audience, and totally altering her voice and physicality, she switches back and forth seamlessly between the two characters at breakneck speed. She extremely skilfully and hilariously depicts arguments, physical struggles, and lovemaking between the two characters, and throughout the 85-minute show she mines this setup for all the comedic gold it contains to constantly deliver new, unexpected, hysterical gags. Palamides is also excellent at audience interaction, able to think on her feet to deliver impromptu hilarity.
The show also excels at lampooning the romcom genre. The story follows well-known beats of romcoms such as When Harry Met Sally or Notting Hill, and Palamides finds creative and hilarious ways to bring elements of these movies to life on stage. A sequence early on perfectly pastiches a meet-cute between the two characters as they are both running late for work, full of all the tropes you would expect from the equivalent scene in a movie but cleverly adapted for a live one-woman performance. Palamides does an equally good job of parodying a passionate kiss in the rain, a “split-screen” telephone conversation, and so on.
Not every joke is as precise and funny. The title of the show refers to Mark’s unique speech impediment, which means he pronounces the word “deer” as “weer”. (Incidentally, this is first introduced alongside a joke featuring a certain R-word, which is supposedly excusable because the show is set in the 90s.) The “weer” joke doesn’t pay off in any meaningful way and is just one example of the weaker jokes where Palamides attempts to derive comedy from sheer randomness, rather than from her precise romcom pastiche or her clever one-woman portrayal of Mark and Kristina. Similarly, a recurring gag where the characters finish each other’s sentences, while hilarious the first time and showcasing a very impressive level of skill, quickly wears thin as it is repeated over and over with less purpose each time. These weaker jokes only stand out so much because the rest of the show is so supremely funny.
WEER excels at providing a silly and extremely creative parody of the romcom genre, driven by a nonstop powerhouse performance by Natalie Palamides, with a healthy dose of 90s nostalgia. It is clever and silly in equal measure, and Palamides gives a staggeringly impressive performance.
Natalie Palamides: WEER runs until 24th January at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, with tickets available at https://sohotheatre.com/walthamstow/
Reviewer: Charles Edward Pipe
Reviewed: 14th January 2026
North West End UK Rating: