Note: This review is from the 2012 Fringe

Theatre / 120 min / £30(£25) / contact venue for suitability guidelines

Showing @ Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre 14, 15 & 19 Aug @ 19:30 & 17, 18 Aug @ 14:00

If evil aliens, intent on world domination had fired a discombobulation ray at the audience for this show, they couldn’t have had a greater effect than maverick Swiss director Christoph Marthaler and Theater Basel, who left the Royal Highland Centre crowd bewildered, bemused, but also greatly entertained. Marthaler’s method can be likened to blending the pieces from a dozen jigsaw puzzles to construct a spectacle that’s colourful, visually exciting, totally random, but that every so often allows you to glimpse something you recognise. Featuring songs from My Fair Lady, but also music by Wagner, Kenny Rogers and Bryan Adams as well as clowning, mime and Marthaler’s trademark inexplicable and lengthy pauses, this is theatre at its most absurd and idiosyncratic. It shouldn’t hold an audience’s attention, but somehow it does – magnificently.

Showing as part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2012.