This hit comedy show is performed by a cast of famous … horses

Ten years ago, when British comedian and director Elf Lyons was studying clowning at the famous Ecole Philippe Gaulier in France, she was desperate to be liked.

Her teacher, the legendary 82-year-old founder and master clown Philippe Gaulier, sensed this straightaway.

“He said, ‘No, this is not going to happen’,” Lyons recounts. “‘You don’t want to be beautiful, you don’t want to be liked. You need to be a bitch. And you need to be a horse.’”

Elf Lyons stars as the Trojan Horse and Seabiscuit and Treacle. Credit: Jason South

So Lyons got up in front of her class and, after playing some bitchy characters, pretended to be a horse. She loved it. Her classmates laughed. And Gaulier, in his famously reserved way, was pleased.

“Philippe was like, ‘The asparagus is not bad as a horse’,” Lyons says, explaining the asparagus nickname came from her height. “And I started to find something really confident in me that I hadn’t had.”

A decade later, after a career of creating, performing and touring her own comedy shows in the UK and beyond, Lyons’ latest work, Horses, part of the Sydney Comedy Festival, is her most successful show yet.

The one-hour solo piece has scored five-star reviews and a slew of awards at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Adelaide Fringe.

Using mime, sketch scenes and audience interaction, Lyons plays a cast of famous horses sourced from myths, legends, wars, sport and more.

Equine characters include Pegasus, the Trojan Horse and Seabiscuit along with a narrator horse called Treacle. Each gives a first-hand account of their time in history.

But Horses – partly developed with comedian Dylan Moran – is about more than that.

Each night, Lyons invites audience members on-stage to join her world of imagining in a quest to reignite the lost art of play.

“I think play is a really serious issue and I don’t think we play enough,” she says. “Especially young people. It’s all on phones, instant gratification and entertainment.

“Play is how you problem-solve and work through complex emotional issues and trauma. It’s how you build your understanding of the world. And I really don’t think we do that any more. Nobody is ever bored now.

“My goal is to make the audience remember what it was like when they were little and they felt safe, and get them to play.”

At the start of every show Lyons welcomes each ticket holder as they arrive.

At the end she returns to the door to thank audience members for coming.

“A lot of them cry,” she says. “It’s a reaction I didn’t expect. One woman was in tears telling me she was going straight home to play with her small daughter because she’d told her she was too busy the day before.”

Ultimately, Lyons hopes people are moved: “I want them to laugh,” she says. “I want them to feel safe. I want them to feel sorrow. I want them to be horrified. And I want them to laugh again.”

Elf Lyons performs Horses on April 23-27 at the Factory Theatre.

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