‘I am a snail!’ shouts young American Gaulier-trained clown Nora Dell from the back of a tiny cellar based theatre in the Cowgate. This announces her presence

She laboriously makes her way to the stage on her knees in a suit jacket and a fetching pink tie. The small rucksack on her back carrys her props and is, in fact, her shell; prompting her to shriek, in her slightly cod Eastern European accent (no particular country) ‘I’m naked!’

She spots your reviewer instantly and demands he takes notes of the business mantras that pepper her interactive business workshop that we, her tiny audience, are attending. Key topics include negotiation skills, storing your business secrets in slime, making enemies, and eating meat.

It’s certainly interactive as Nora crowdworks heavily throughout, mostly to good effect.

And as befits her training it’s a pretty surreal concept. Did you ever go to a motivational business workshop moderated by an Eastern European gastropod?

The considerable crowd work throughout the show (nobody was spared) means that the show falls quite decidedly into the improv camp, and that might not be everyone’s cup of tea although, to be fair, most of it works pretty well, though when it doesn’t work, it’s obvious. An audience-inclusive rendition of ‘Silent Night’, where key words are replaced with snail doesn’t quite hit the mark, but she gives it a good old go.

Nora has to be complimented for creating a genuinely original conceptual theatre show, but she’s maybe bitten off a little more than she can chew. Whilst it has whimsy and charm in bucketloads it feels like a show in development. Which means that it could turn into a right rollicking hoot, but for now it lacks a little structure and purpose, and the whole doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts.

That said, it’s an entertaining enough 45 minutes and the originality of the idea just about gets it over the line.

I Am A Snail has finished its run