Dead Ghost Star

• Claire Sawers
• 12 August 2014

This article is from 2014.

Alternative child-friendly comedy is space oddity lost in a vacuum at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

This hour of nonsense clowning in space is a bit like Spike Milligan on MDMA, or Edward Lear doing a guest appearance at the Hacienda. Cheekykita and Mr Dinner bring their odd space odyssey to a hidden room in the flyer-covered maze of Cowgatehead, accompanied by the music of New Order, David Bowie and Yann Tiersen, with miniature green glow sticks provided.

It’s a lo-fi ride, complete with a nicely shonky set and props; star dust and star juice are sprinkled and squirted over the mesmerised, baffled crowd, and boiler suits and sparkly curtains help tell the story of supernovas, black holes and a sleaze called Henry Smoothy. It’s a show that really doesn’t benefit from explanation on paper; you’ll just have to take it on good faith that an unlikely mimed lizard ballet to ‘Blue Monday’ is a highlight, thanks to charming-weirdo Mancunian, Cheekykita, an oddball physical comedian whose face contorts sublimely between cute dimwit to fierce abyss.

Meanwhile, Mr Dinner floats about in slo-mo, like a grown-up Petit Prince, looking for a friend in the lonely vacuum of the cosmos. It’s alternative (read: enjoyably batshit), child-friendly comedy gibberish, for those who like an astral flight of fantasy into the very weird.

Cowgatehead, 226 0000, until 23 Aug, 5pm, free.