Edinburgh Guide, Edinburgh 2000
Ridiculusmus: Yes Yes Yes
Venue Scotsman: Assembly
Address: 54 George Street
Reviewer: Colin Donati, Edinburgh Guide
The bizarre and apparently chaotic comedy of Jon Hough and David Woods in this show leaves the audience as much bewildered as laughing. David Woods, is the ‘comic’ Mr H, a dishevelled disciple seeking wisdom from the ‘straight’ Jon Hough’s Indian guru Chaterjee, poised in meditation, who coolly demands strange payment for the promise of the answers. Answers to questions such as what is truth, whether you can get your blood back from lice or are women worth it?
Everything starts to unravel from the moment Mr H punches himself from his box, piped out in snake charmer mode. Dangerously, this strange version of a human being barely seems to be in control of anything that pertains to him – not movements, not props, not clothes, nor speech. He voices sentences occasionally so incomprehensible we’re not always quite sure what we just thought we understood. Meanwhile Chaterjee supplies the thread of perfect Indian diction and simple clarity – clear as mud. Together the contrast works a devastating logic. Volatile and chaotic, in the school of a Tommy Cooper on acid, and with casual disregard for the space, the pair mediate a slow disintegration into anarchy. Clouds of talcum powder, water, cardboard, ironing boards – no matter what – one way or another everything collapses, breaks or is flung to the winds.
And all the time there’s the niggling feeling more is happening than meets the eye, but you can’t quite work out what. Is that the motor of a genuine slide projector running? If so, why doesn’t anyone turn it off, or find it? There’s even a white-screen up, but nothing’s going to happen – is it? Like two big kids in a trash kindergarten without an adult in sight, the pair thoroughly enjoy making the biggest, most thoroughly convincing mess of a stage floor outside circus. And what’ s it all for? Ah well – that would be telling. Just so long as you are prepared to completely fail to understand why you might be laughing, a thoroughly recommended show.
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