Cheekykita: Tittitutar Town

• Kirstyn Smith
• 19 August 2016

This article is from 2016

Oddball clown act manages to hit hysterical from time to time

Cheekykita is what happens when that weird lassie from high school grows up, but doesn't lose her oddity. The one who thinks she's a cat, except now she's paid to indulge herself on stage. Cheekykita could be annoying, but her crazed clowning show, mixing characters and breaking all the walls in theatre, is first intriguing, then, very quickly, bizarrely hilarious.

Tittitutar Town is inhabited by weirdos: a half Irish / half Cornish spider who lives in Lady Spooker's house; Lady Spooker herself, who is genuinely terrifying on first glance; a shark who likes to sing the Smiths: that kind of thing. 'You definitely need a white wine before this show,' says an audience member, left alone on stage for some minutes, dressed as a crab, before the shark and another viewer forced into a ghost costume join her for a dance-off.

The line between what is real and what's an act is pleasantly blurred; even Cheekykita herself doesn't seem sure. At one point she lets slip, 'You're out of the show!' to a misbehaving prop, before correcting herself: 'Oh no, it's not a show, it's real.' But later, she acknowledges her ability to turn this strange world on and off by proclaiming 'That's it, I've had enough', halfway through a sketch. Like Alice in Wonderland on Adderall, Cheekykita is curious, shambolic and kind of magical.

Sweet Grassmarket, 243 3596, until 28 Aug, 3.50pm, £5 or Pay What You Want.