★★★★
Twonkey’s dead! He succumbed after eating a tin of contaminated condensed milk, or so his Widow Twonketta tells us!
Paul Vicker’s Twonkey narrative has coursed through the Edinburgh Fringe for 15 years now! In doing so, he has picked up numerous awards and a loyal cult audience. The reason being is that Paul is a committed performer, who crafts his shows like doll’s houses – there isn’t a cynical P.R stunt angled bone in his body!
For the uninitiated, a Twonkey show is a collage of song, stories and puppetry – ostensibly conveying some grand tale; this year it’s about Twonketta’s fairground, which has fallen on hard times, her only hope is to sabotage the rival fairground ride, the eponymous Zip Wire to Zanzibar. But this conceit is an afterthought to the stories and songs that erupt out of this volcano of considered chaos.
It would be a disservice to Paul to describe his act as just ‘crazy, off-the-wall’, his storytelling tradition is as rich as vaudeville, and it’s his Northern idiosyncrasies that make the language rich.
An example of this is the introduction of ‘Cheeky Chops’ a large felt fly that spies on everyone. The accompanying song is wonderful.
I feel that Paul deserves a better venue. Although his show can rely on the buzzing atmosphere of a cabaret bar’s backroom, it suffers when audiences are too rowdy. Some of his asides are detailed and complex; breathy monologues about Cumbernauld and magic snails are lost amongst the audiences ribaldry. Still Twonketta is a pro, and never lets anything get in the way of a good time.
Twonkey’s Zip Wire to Zanzibar is on at the Other Room at Laughing Horse @ Dragonfly until August 24th
