Ever heard of a Geometric Tortoise? Or a Cryptic Treehunter? Me neither. But performer Tom Bailey of Mechanimal has set himself the task of imitating each of these extinct or endangered species – plus many more – without resorting to Google for help. Instead, he takes his cue from the names. So a Laughing Owl hoots and cackles; an Epirus Dancing Grasshopper boogies around the stage. You get the idea.
It’s a wonderfully daft premise with more mileage than you’d think. Bailey gets the audience involved too, giving us each a “spirit animal” (mine’s a Quick Stick Insect) and interacting with us in “character”. But all through this there’s a Perspex box full of animal bones sat on one side of the stage – an ominous reminder of the death and destruction that lurks beneath the larking around.
And Bailey dares to take us there. Rarely can a show scale such dizzying heights of silliness before plunging to such depths of existential despair. The performance becomes infected with loss, as Bailey struggles to inhabit the multiplying list of vanished species flashing up behind him. Brilliantly yet devastatingly, Wild Thing! morphs from a virtuosic act of clowning to a bitter eulogy for all the weird, beautiful, unknowable creatures we’ve obliterated.
Wild Thing!, Summerhall, until 25 Aug (not 12, 19), 1.30pm