Guess Who: Meinzeye or Cold Corner?

To confirm suspicions that every second Fringe show requires a gimmick, Sweet have added a twist to their double bill of contemporary theatre. Each day, audiences can guess which of the two companies, Meinzeye or Cold Corner, will be performing. Guess right, and the prize is a free ticket to the other production.

I ended up with the offering from Meinzeye, but I was still left guessing after the lights went up. Contrary to the Fringe programme, the company are here not with The Uncanny Valley but with new show Gypsy Ghetto Game, a surreal satire of media and political attitudes towards Eastern European immigration.

Not that you would know until about halfway through this distractingly jumbled mess. We see a movement sequence with a wheelie bin, a man eating a banana, the arrival of a newcomer with a cartoonish accent – all with seemingly little relation to one another. It eventually emerges that a UKIP-esque politician is trying to rid this imagined town of immigrants, but the critique is vague to say the least.

The supposed satire, meanwhile, goes no further than clumsily reproducing national stereotypes and setting up the despised politician as a pantomime villain figure. The effect is less to examine the troubling electoral appeal of UKIP than to carelessly knock it aside.

Meinzeye’s frequent, superfluous snatches of dance add nothing to our understanding, only adding extra layers to an already opaque show. If this is the best we can to do to undermine them, then UKIP are laughing.