Review: Christina Bianco: First Impressions

Christina Bianco is who she is, she tells us – except when she’s an impressive amount of other people over the course of a packed hour.

Bianco is an effortless performer, as accomplished a technical singer as she is an impressionist. She races through impression after impression, each immediately recognisable and without a dud amongst them, which is no mean feat when you consider their breadth – Jennifer Aniston becomes Barbra Streisand, transforming into Edith Piaf and even, when you least expect it, TOWIE’s Amy Childs. Alongside a talented band, Bianco deals with an improvisational section with ease, and makes clever use of recordings by other impressionists when she needs to catch her breath.

There is the slight sense of a longer show condensed for Fringe purposes – but then that’s exactly what this is. And when the result is a hit rate that must average an impression a minute, that’s hardly cause for complaint.