Blind Summit, Low Life

Review in Issue 17-4 | Winter 2005

Now, this is a real Edinburgh moment: it is 10.30 in the morning and here in the heart of the Underbelly, the Jelly Belly bar is full of folks queuing to see their first show of the day-a sell-out adult puppetry cabaret which takes its inspiration from boozy late-Beat poet and original Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski. In Low Life we meet a motley crew of puppet characters including a Kevin Spacey lookalike who needs just one more drink, a gold-lamé clad diva who's seen it all, and a Chinese cleaner with a penchant for literary criticism. The puppets are beautifully crafted and the sketches delivered very much in the post-Burkett new puppetry style of intimate interaction between animator and puppet. The master slave relationship between puppets and humans is played to the max – the puppets croon, confess, cajole, but ultimately they are at the mercy of their operators. There's still work to be done on Low Life – it has the feel of a show put together a little rapidly and some of the sketches feel out-of-place. But with a bit of gluing together here and there, we won't even see the joins And fabulous to see UK puppetry for grown-ups take the Fringe by storm!

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Aug 2005

This article in the magazine

Issue 17-4
p. 27