Is the Edinburgh fringe sufficiently big for rival comedy reveals about warring kids’s entertainers? In fact! This amiable two-hander for over-14s is about within the treacherous world of dinosaur-themed events and makes a lunchtime different to the Pleasance Courtyard hit String v Spitta (starring Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Ed MacArthur).
Sporting do-it-yourself scaly dungarees and a T-Rex cranium masks, nerdy Terrence is traipsing by means of the get together circuit with a song-and-joke-filled act that’s fairly prehistoric itself. He’s unimpressed when his company sends alongside fellow dino performer Tri-Sarah-Tops, sporting a three-horned bonnet, to jolly it up – and much more unimpressed when she will get greater laughs along with her lewd materials.
To make issues worse, his ex Daphne the Diplodocus has her personal present that’s head and shoulders above his. In the meantime, his revered Nationwide Geographic (lovingly dubbed “Nat Geo”) retains publishing analysis that makes his act look inaccurate.
Because the duo crew up for a present that takes place amid the haggis hurl and tug of warfare at Inverkeithing’s Highland Video games, author Alex Zawalnyski has enjoyable sustaining the strain between uptight Terrence (performed by himself) and upfront Sarah (Morgan Ferguson). His default mode is delusional conceitedness whereas hers is deadpan bemusement. Terrence deploys Reithian rules to his performances and studiously warms up his roars earlier than taking the stage; Sarah needs a life past dinosaurs however is clearly not but positive what. His strained relationship with Daphne (whom Sarah idolises) is mirrored in her estrangement from her father, a legend within the dinosaur world and Terrence’s private hero. If Daphne particularly had been to be additionally performed on stage, the comedy would rocket.
The content material of the youngsters’s reveals themselves could possibly be dropped at life with cringier humour, particularly Terrence’s solo act, which bombs at a seven-year-old’s party in a gap scene that could possibly be sharper. However Zawalnyski’s resistance to any tidy romcom conclusion is welcome and neither character is proscribed to serving to the opposite develop. Sarah, beautifully performed by Ferguson, emerges as each susceptible and clear-eyed about Terrence’s self-absorption. Directed by Laura Hounsell for Apropos Theatre, it’s a candy, low-key present the place the laughter seldom roars however is all the time heat.