Trygve Wakenshaw: Nautilus

★★★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
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39658 original
Published 12 Aug 2015
33332 large
39658 original

If you were heading to this show in the hope that you’d learn how to pronounce this artist’s first name then you, sir, are out of luck. The mime artist and widely celebrated clown presents 90 minutes of high-energy silent comedy with the occasional utterance or spot-on animal impression to punctuate his sketches. His gangly frame twists and turns like a rollercoaster bringing new physicality to beasts and man alike. Trygve is a Loony Toons creation made flesh, with short subversive vignettes that poke fun at much braver subjects than any cartoon ought. A common theme is "No means No", and a number of irksome human characters get their comeuppance from a chicken, a cow and a sheep at different times.

Physical comedy is a tough art to get right, and certainly a difficult task to keep fresh for the same time as a football match. But Wakenshawe manages this with inventive use of light, and returning characters marked out by the smallest of actions such as the tossing of a cigarette. It might take a while for some to get fully on board with Wakenshaw, but once you connect with the world he has created in his mind you can’t help but see it and be carried away by the pure joy of his madcap landscapes.