Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023
Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (venue 24) – until 27th August 2023
Reviewed by Rachel Farrier
3***
This show describes itself as a dark comedy-musical and it certainly lives up to this description – it was a classic of the anything-goes-at-the-Fringe genre.
The show I went along to was on a Saturday evening and I would guess that most of the audience had spent the day alternating between other shows and some alcoholic refreshment, which made for a fairly riotous crowd. But the small cast took this in their stride, playing to it like absolute pros.
And this was the greatest strength of the show – a completely committed cast, with first rate performances, as good as any you would see on any professional stage – it was only a shame that their stage was so small! But that is the nature of the Fringe.
Physical humour throughout, catchy tunes and a winning performance from Potty the Plant and his puppeteer (how he sang whilst crammed in a box, under Potty’s ‘desk’ I have no idea) carried the barely-constructed plot along. I found the central ‘reveal’ about the character of Dr Acula frankly distateful and not something I can personally laugh about, but the audience around me were having a ball and the overall daft hilarity did make for an enjoyable hour of dark humour.