Oh what a jolly jape is this! All our favourite Quixote moments are here, delivered with great gusto. Stephen Harper’s height grants a great advantage to a clown interpretation of the battle with the windmills; the lovely lady Dulcinea (who never appears in the original text) here appears flamenco-dancing on demand, every time her name is mentioned (unless she happens to be in character as someone else at the time, in which case a stage whisper ‘I can’t!’ adds comic resonance). The trusty stead Rocinante is brought to life by the three actors (aforementioned guest player Stephen Harper with company co-directors Merce Ribot and Patricia Rodriguez), all breathlessly switching from front or rear end of horse and rider depending on whose line it is, as Quixote and faithful side-kick Sancho Panza ride off on their adventures. All of this augmented and supported by the great musical talents of Spanish classical guitarist Maria Camahort, who (as is the way in clown shows) gets drawn into the action on many occasions.

As the company admit in their programme notes, taking on Don Quixote is a great challenge. Is it just madness? They are aiming for the moon, and won’t settle for less. Do they meet the challenge?

What they present is a refreshingly uplifting piece that is not only a paean to Cervantes classic text but also a kind of tribute to the physical theatre canon. I’ve no idea if the company are aware of, or have seen, any of the very many other physical theatre interpretations of this classic tale, but echoes are there regardless – in particular, to the classic physical theatre version by Gerry Flanagan’s Commotion Theatre – which, 20 years ago, was perhaps the definitive clown Quixote.

The staging is good: the company use a stage-within-the-stage, a built platform with little trapdoors, making for lots of exciting entrances and exits. There’s a Commedia cum Pantomime feel, with lots of running out into the audience, and little ironic asides and contemporary touches here and there. There are many references to being players making a play – again, this fits the traditions being honoured very well.  I love the interplay between English and Spanish, especially the way that players not getting their way revert to ranting in Spanish. A crucial element of clown is exposure of the self – and each performer’s physical attributes, nationality and language all become fair game for the comedy. There are superb clown moments galore – the classic bucket of water filled with confetti is done with a lovely twist.  And who can resist foolish faux-puppetry?  The cushion sheep, especially…

It’s a not a boundary-breaking show. If you want a more radical interpretation of this text, try Tom Frankland’s Quijote (seen at the Edinburgh Fringe 2013).  But if you like good solid clown and physical theatre skills used to great effect in the telling of a well-loved tale, this is the show for you. There are (inevitably) comparisons to be made to companies that have blazed the way for mime/physical theatre in the UK, including Commotion, Brouhaha, Told By An Idiot, and Spymonkey (and indeed Spymonkey’s Aitor Basauri is credited for R&D development). Yet they are making the form their own. And how wonderful it is to see young audiences coming along in droves to support and appreciate work of this sort. All power to the Little Soldiers – can’t wait to see what they dare to tackle next. I’m very glad they didn’t wait until they’d grown up to take on the giants and dragons of La Mancha.

Leixlip, County Kildare, Ireland. The year is 2000, the start of a new century – although here is a news story that is almost Medieval. Four women die in a suicide pact. They are 83-year-old Frances Mulhooney and her three nieces, Josephine (46) and the 51-year-old twins Brigid Ruth and Catherine. The women barricade themselves into a house and, over a period of around 40 days, starve themselves to death. The last time any of them were seen in public was when two of the sisters, Catherine and Josephine, went on a shopping trip to St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Brigid Ruth left letters in the house, expressing doubts about what they were doing.

These are the bare facts. We weren’t there. We don’t know what they said. This is not their story. This is many years later, and here we have Anglo-Irish theatre company Dead Centre finding a way to reflect on the story that tries to bring something to the stage other than journalistic investigation. As Bush Moukarzel (writer/performer/co-director) puts it, we are not here to find the truth, nor to create a sensationalist thriller. We are here to reflect on the bare facts, and to allow our imaginations to run wild. To think about the unthinkable – death – and to know, to really know, that no matter when, no matter what the circumstances, we will all one day face death, alone. Black. No return. Nothing.

Dead Centre theatre company take the bare facts of the case and turn them into an extraordinary theatre piece that, rather than search for meaning, explores meaninglessness and the spaces in between the facts. They describe their piece as a wake – a tribute to the women that honours (rather than explains) their bizarre and unfathomable decision to die in such a terrible way. Although there are no conclusions to be made, there is a strong suggestion that the desire to shake off this mortal coil is sparked by an obsession with Catholic stories of martyrdom, fasting, and the denial of the body’s needs; and driven by a desire to ‘shrug off the overcoat’ of physicality in order to reach heaven as soon as possible. Death, unfortunately, takes its time. In the time it takes them to die, there is an obvious and heartbreaking analogy to Christ’s 40 days in the desert, and the 40 days of Lent. ‘None of us could have foreseen our deaths would be so cruel and slow’ says Brigid Ruth. Which may or may not be something she said in one of her letters.

This is a theatre of design: a collage of fantastic (in both senses of the word) moving pictures; a theatre in which objects take on magical powers. One known fact – that one of the women’s bodies was found in the kitchen, surrounded by bin bags – becomes the source of the central scenographic image of the show: four figures sleepwalking through a landscape of tables, chairs, bags, and scattered paper, crockery, and garbage. I like the onstage division between the ‘real’ world and the Leixlip house. Visual images are powerful, haunting. A back wall is chalked with the outlines of human figures, like ghosts that watch the action. Rain drips then pours in a deluge into a bucket. A china cup is chewed, drawing blood. A leaf-blower blows shredded paper around the stage. A vase smashes: ‘I’ve had enough of dead flowers’ says a sister.

It is also a theatre that uses words in strange and wonderful ways. The role that a lip-reader played in the police investigation is seized on as a motif that permeates the whole show – apparently lip-readers are regularly employed to ‘read’ CCTV footage, and in this case that final shopping outing is scrutinised and deconstructed, the ‘lip-reader’ character then going on to become a kind of intruder-witness to the women’s deaths, mouthing words that they may or may not have said. ‘Wait, it didn’t happen like this, I didn’t say this’ says one of the women. ‘I’m sorry, I was only trying to help’ says the lip-reader. One whole long section of a filmed close-up of lips has echoes of Beckett’s Not I. Brigid Ruth’s letters – presented verbatim, possibly, are texts that both enlighten and add further mystery. Some are poetic: ‘I believe we all of us, every single soul, has a karmic debt to pay off (me included)’ and some are prosaic: ‘Let’s think of exiting ourselves humanely…save ourselves a slow and painful hell.’

And this is a theatre in which sound design is not merely decorative, it is integral to the dramaturgy of the piece. As the four women and the lip-reader negotiate their way through the terrible green-lit dreamscape kitchen, a deep throbbing bass sound, deep enough to be felt in the stomach, shakes the room. ‘Found sound’ includes country music classic Home is Where You’re Happy and Elvis Presley’s Crying in the Chapel. Played straight, slowed down, sung along to. Sound designer Adam Welsh is a co-founder of the company, and appears onstage playing ‘Adam the Technician’.

The third core member of Dead Centre is c0-director Ben Kidd – who must have had his work cut out for him balancing so many disparate elements – text, physical action, visual imagery, sound –a job he has done very well for the most part. The show also credits ‘cameo writer’ Mark O’Halloran, an established screenwriter – and indeed it is a very filmic piece of theatre.

There are some criticisms: occasionally the piece is tripped up by its postmodern meta-theatre elements. I dislike the beginning – a mock post-show discussion. I understand the need to find a way theatrically to present the facts of the case before we spin off into the world of the four women, but this set-up for me doesn’t work well. I do, though, enjoy the performative ‘interval’ where, in place of a real interval, we are treated to a minute or two of the lip-reader ‘relaxing’.

Formed in 2012 in Dublin, Dead Centre are on their third production. They come to Scotland with a raft of accolades from the Dublin Fringe, where Lippy premiered in 2013. It is unusual to come across work this ambitious from young companies based in the UK or Ireland – an exceptional piece, despite some flaws.

Lippy is shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award 2014 for Innovation & Experimentation. 

In which Pinocchio, the ‘prince of porkies’, now a middle-aged man in a tired tuxedo and Brylcreemed hair, tells us the truth about his life – if we are ready, willing and able to believe him.

And thus the well-known tale is retold by a five-strong team of vaudevillians – four actor-clowns, and a musician who plays a variety of instruments, including the intrinsically clownish melodeon. The musician also occasionally gets drawn into the physical action, to up ensemble numbers where needed.

For reasons not immediately clear to me – although I later guess that it is perhaps to set up the postmodern notion that Pinocchio’s story is one that mixes truth and lies, so how do we trust even the writer of the tale? – we learn that the puppet-boy is not, as we had been told, carved from a piece of wood by his father, but given birth to by a real live mother. Cue comedy birthing scene, never a highlight of any show (although the motherly waltz with a log of wood is tenderly funny).

But it gets better from there on in, as all the familiar elements of the story are revisited, with our point of view switching from older fleshed-out Pinocchio and his younger (puppet) self. The encounter with the Fox and the Cat is played out with merry banter and music hall aplomb; and the various appearances of the Blue Fairy portrayed very nicely by a white-faced young woman clown who has a perfect air of whimsicality.

There is a very sweet little shadow theatre scene that goes up a notch when the action moves onto a twirled umbrella – a lovely touch. For the most part, the ensemble give robust performances that incorporate elements of vaudeville, clown and commedia. The troupe appeared to be native English speakers (despite the company’s name), unless they were just very good at archetypal English accents – but why we have a ‘shut-uppa your face’ cod-Italian chef turning up to reinforce racial stereotypes I’m not quite sure…  As there was no programme for the show, all this will remain a mystery to me.

The ploy of playing some scenes ‘straight’ (that is, as told in the original novel), with invented new ones thrown in to surprise us, I suppose makes sense dramaturgically in a show that sets out to explore if truth matters and whether ‘lying makes everything better’ as the older Pinocchio claims. But the strength of the original story shines through in the fact that it is often the invented scenes that seem the weakest. The exception being the ending, which is a poignant and beautiful play on the ‘real’ versus ‘the make-believe’. Ultimately, the most obvious pretence can be as truthful as can be, and a handful of scattered paper flowers as heartbreaking as a river of blood.

Verdict: a jolly romp, and an interesting new take on the Pinocchio story that isn’t perfect, but enjoyable nonetheless. A good Fringe show; an hour well spent.