If you’re looking for realistic, hard hitting theatre you better try elsewhere, but if you’re willing to suspend belief and enjoy some of the best character acting this year’s Fringe has to offer you better get yourself down to the Smirnoff Underbelly.
Gogol’s Underdog’s mixes some of Gogol’s weird and wonderful short stories into a twisted tale of three council workers in St Petersburg.
Through a mixture of narration, monologues and excellent puppet work, three individual tales of woe are unfurled before your eyes. Each is a little more ridiculous than the next, but all make compelling viewing.
The action skips back and forth at a healthy pace, but you always know where you are, despite the cast of four playing a whole host of separate characters. All four performers are outstanding and excel at creating the darkly comic world of Gogol, but it’s the puppet dogs that really steal the show.
Gogol’s Underdogs is a deliciously daft piece of theatre. It is well worked, slickly performed and entertaining from start to finish.
4/5
Richard Biggs
