Eat Your Art Out

6 February 2010, Soho Theatre, London

This show was awesome. We watched the last performance of the run, which started at 11pm. It really reminded me of being at the Fringe Festival. Not only because the show is very typically fringe (and is from the Fringe), but Soho Theatre itself, the audience and also the timing of the performance were all Fringe-esque too. I love it how when you are at the Fringe, you almost lose track of time. Time only matters because you have to make it to the next show. And that it limits how many shows you can cram into a day. You are completely surrounded by the arts, watching show after show, where food and drink almost become extraneous – you only eat and drink because you have to. Love it 🙂

The show was brilliant. As a friend put it, it’s like watching a living cartoon. The two actors Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen played dozens of characters between them, doing split-second transformations, but done so cleverly and vividly you knew right away who they were playing. They conjured up a fantasy world, telling the story of a bizarre train journey they took. It was really impressive how they weaved together all the storylines (in super highspeed!), so that a show that started off seemingly fragmented, really came together at the end. Impersonations, stereotypes, slow-mo, flashbacks, fast forwards and replays. There were so many scenes that could have come straight out of Family Guy.

Some of my favs – the card shuffling scene, where one of the guys shuffles an invisible deck for about five minutes straight, going from simple shuffling to mowing the lawn in between; the ghost-devil Jennifer and the not-so-invincible teenager Dan; the pervy cowboy novel that was then acted out; the punks with the mohawk and toupee; the American aunts who were ever so blunt to each other; the small thing and the French spy; the train manager… genius sticks!

Am definitely going to keep an eye out for their return!