Grief isn’t fun, which makes this bizarrely amusing clowning and physical comedy show by performers Alice Yorke and Scott R Sheppard (aka Lightning Rod Special, creators of previous Fringe hit Underground Railroad Game) all the more unusual. Both, they eventually explain, lost their dads recently, very close to one another, and here they play comically exaggerated versions of both themselves and their fathers, initially at a kind of Dickensian feast on the long table laid out along the centre of the stage.
Directed by Sarah Blush, both performers are dressed in tweedy suits with ludicrous wigs and moustaches, and at first their apparent ideal of a father is a blend of Bob Cratchit’s hard-working, thankless provider and the kind of stuffy, amiable dadbro you used to see on American television shows. Much of the early sections of the performance are silly and playful, but it opens out emotionally as the performers bring more of themselves into it.
They recreate the heartbreaking monotony of the hospital vigil and the comic quest to guess the password to a dad’s laptop which contains all of his “in the event of my death” plans. Yorke detailing the lists of regrets and life achievements her father left the family is incredibly poignant, and a section which wondering who here will be the next and the last to die brings their subject resoundingly back home to everyone in the room.
Lions, Summerhall, run ended