Ellen Turnill Montoya is Mr Handsome @ Assembly George Sq

Ellen Turnill Montoya’s Mr Handsome asks us a great many questions: Who is Mr Handsome? What are hands? And more importantly, why are hands? 

Mr Handsome, a vaguely uncanny human-sized talking hand, is a wonderfully absurd character excellently brought to life by Turnill Montoya’s endlessly enthusiastic physical theatre performance. No amount of handshakes, high fives, or hand jobs will slow her down. It’s an energy that the audience quickly grabs onto, and it’s a good thing that they do, because Mr Handsome ensures no hand is left behind. Hold on tight and prepare for a big handful of audience participation!

Amid a myriad of hand-based puns, Mr Handsome leads the audience in a lesson on how they too can become a successful hand model just like him. But is Mr Handsome quite so successful? Beneath the wild enthusiasm for all things fingers and thumbs, the character embodies a familiar archetype: the washed-up celebrity desperately clinging to an industry that is rapidly leaving them in the dust, complete with a totally Hollywood agent (represented by a pair of oversized lips, of course). It’s a very human fear, amplified to ridiculousness by a performer who has chosen to embody the very thing which we use to make art. This fear-factor is particularly enhanced by Tunrill Montoya’s dwellings on AI and its threat to her career – that is, when it finally learns how to correctly render hands.

Mr Handsome’s desperation to keep up with the fast-paced world of the hand-modelling industry does, at times, bleed out into the interactions with the audience. Indeed, her instinct is often to handhold the audience by laying events out with a directness that isn’t needed. The silliness of Mr Handsome’s concept, not to mention its hilariously oversized props and eccentric physical comedy, is more than enough to carry the audience safely along.

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Ellen Turnill Montoya is Mr Handsome, Assembly George Square Studios (Studio 4), until 24 Aug (not 12, 19), 5.20pm, £8-12