Is the Edinburgh fringe sufficiently big for rival comedy presentations about warring youngsters’s entertainers? In fact! This amiable two-hander for over-14s is about within the treacherous global of dinosaur-themed events and makes a lunchtime choice to the Pleasance Courtyard hit String v Spitta (starring Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Ed MacArthur).
Dressed in do-it-yourself scaly dungarees and a T-Rex cranium masks, nerdy Terrence is traipsing during the birthday celebration circuit with a song-and-joke-filled act that’s beautiful prehistoric itself. He’s unimpressed when his company sends alongside fellow dino performer Tri-Sarah-Tops, carrying a three-horned bonnet, to jolly it up – and much more unimpressed when she will get larger laughs together with her lewd subject material.
To make issues worse, his ex Daphne the Diplodocus has her personal display this is head and shoulders above his. In the meantime, his respected Nationwide Geographic (lovingly dubbed “Nat Geo”) assists in keeping publishing analysis that makes his act glance erroneous.
Because the duo staff up for a display that takes position amid the haggis hurl and tug of struggle at Inverkeithing’s Highland Video games, author Alex Zawalnyski has amusing maintaining the strain between uptight Terrence (performed by means of himself) and prematurely Sarah (Morgan Ferguson). His default mode is delusional conceitedness whilst hers is deadpan bemusement. Terrence deploys Reithian ideas to his performances and studiously warms up his roars ahead of taking the level; Sarah desires a lifestyles past dinosaurs however is obviously now not but certain what. His strained courting with Daphne (whom Sarah idolises) is reflected in her estrangement from her father, a legend within the dinosaur global and Terrence’s non-public hero. If Daphne particularly had been to be additionally performed on level, the comedy would rocket.
The content material of the kids’s presentations themselves might be dropped at lifestyles with cringier humour, particularly Terrence’s solo act, which bombs at a seven-year-old’s party in a gap scene which may be sharper. However Zawalnyski’s resistance to any tidy romcom conclusion is welcome and neither persona is proscribed to serving to the opposite develop. Sarah, fantastically performed by means of Ferguson, emerges as each susceptible and clear-eyed about Terrence’s self-absorption. Directed by means of Laura Hounsell for Apropos Theatre, it’s a candy, low-key display the place the laughter seldom roars however is at all times heat.