Fringe 2013 Bribe of the Week - I Believe in Unicorns

• Niki Boyle
• 7 August 2013

This article is from 2013

Wizard Theatre's custom creativity just tops The Dead Secret's vintage treasure

Week two of our 2013 Fringe Bribe project brought with it a challenge: do we reward people who craft us personally-relevant pieces of creativity, or those who send us the coolest-looking stuff? In the end, we went with the former: week two's Bribe of the Week goes to Wizard Theatre's I Believe in Unicorns (adapted from the children's book by Michael Morpurgo), who sent us a package of bespoke loveliness: a handmade pop-up unicorn (which one of our team churlishly pointed out was actually a pegasus); a short song called 'The Saddest Dragon', with lyrics adapted for the bribee (yours truly); and a short, improvised sci-fi fantasy story about the founding of The List, once again featuring your bribe-loving correspondent as well as the magazine's publisher. So, you know, to keep in the boss's good books, it had to win.

If it hadn't been for Wizard's thoughtful and considered approach though, sketch group The Dead Secrets (in town with their show Bulletproof Jest) would have knocked it out of the park with their ultra-cool WWII ration tin. Not only was it a seriously sweet-ass piece of vintage military paraphernalia (that sort of thing impresses folks round these parts), it also contained some Fringe journo's essentials: a chocolate biscuit, a miniature whisky, a recipe for 'Space Bread', a plaster, a stick-on moustache and tons of jumbo bubblewrap. It was a sterling effort, chaps, and on any other week you probably would've bagged it. Better luck next time.