I am aware that, for the majority of the Fringe dwelling population, performance poetry isn’t high on the agenda of must-sees, but I suggest that these people take a chance on Nathan Penlington.
His show comprises of a journey through his progression of ambition, from being the guy in charge of trampolines at the carnival to magician, then poet and, hopefully, resulting in full rock star status.
Penlington uses a lot of material from his childhood, making use of his father’s old reel to reel recordings of gun fights from the TV and, bizarrely, hours and hours of himself pouring water between two glasses. This really shouldn’t be ample material to build a show on but Penlington’s poetry performances, which pepper this whimsy, are well timed and work to balance out his show. There are also some nicely placed incidentals throughout the play, which went down well with the audience; not many performers open up their own souvenir shop mid performance and sell sticks of rock form Rhyl!
4/5
Becky Stone
