Paul Zerdin: No Strings, Gilded Balloon, review You don't need any particular penchant for ventriloquism to recognise that Paul Zerdin is a class act. His technique is exemplary. There is almost none of that awful "Gook gat gee, gi can geek gigouk googing gy giks" that you get with second-raters in his profession and, what's more, the flexibility and dexterity of his "voice" are remarkable. It's one thing, for example, to be able to do a near-perfect impersonation of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, quite another to be able to do it using only your throat. And that gives a hint of how full of neat ideas No Strings Is. Sure, the three chief characters - a bolshie baby, a petulant kid and a cranky old sex-pest and - are nothing remarkable to look at, and putting audience-abusing foul language in the mouths of superficially innocent dummies is a tried-and-tested staple. But, moments of variety-show corn aside, Zerdin's script for all of them is lively, and there are plenty of surprises, too. It's a satisfying mind-scrambler to see a ventriloquist and his puppet do impersonations of each other, and the spider and the mosquito trapped in the same box make a great little vignette. But it is until the end that Zerdin keeps the very best section of the show. About three-quarters of the way through, he asks if there's a couple (bona fide audience members, by the way) who wouldn't mind coming on stage and going to be "prepped" in the wings. Once they're back on, he effectively transforms them into flesh-and-blood puppets of his own creation, making his words come out of their mouths and somehow sinking them ever deeper into character. It's every bit as much fun as it sounds - but if you want to find out how he does it, you'll just have to go along and see for yourself.