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Edinburgh Fringe 2016

Guy Masterson : Love and Canine Integration

Guy Masterson – Theatre Tours International

Genre: Solo Show, Storytelling

Venue: Assembly Roxy

Festival:


Low Down

An hour of storytelling from that doyen of the Fringe, Guy Masterson.

 

Review

There are not many dog-lovers in tonight’s audience but the irrepressibly jovial Guy Masterson quickly discovers that an overwhelming majority of those seated in the comfortable Assembly Roxy’s Downstairs theatre have seen him before in some guise or another. So in the “Win the Audience Over Handicap Stakes”, he’s half way down the course before the starting gun’s been fired on his latest one-man show to grace the Edinburgh Fringe.

Sounding as hoarse as befits a man delivering his forty-ninth show in the last three weeks, he embarked on what turned out to be a gently amusing tale of canine cunning and transcontinental marriage. It’s all to do with love, he explained. Falling for this gorgeous Paris-based German model, he ended up acquiring rather more than he bargained for. His whirlwind romance, conducted almost exclusively this side of the channel, convinced him that this was his girl for life. But just as he’s about to pop the question, she bursts his bubble by warning him that’s there’s another male in her life.

Turns out that said male is Nelson, a dog which would-be wife would not leave in Paris. And so began an eight year relationship that tested just about everything to breaking point – marriage, career, sanity and bank balance.

Masterson is a consummate storyteller, using every inch of his ample frame to create the physical and oral image of the characters, in this case, principally wife and dog. In fact, he was so good at bringing the latter to life, you felt the mutt was in the room with you, uttering the words Masterson imagines the animal to be growling at him. It’s a tale of poop, pooch pandering and psychological warfare (mainly on the part of said pooch) that twists and turns over the course of what proves to be a perfectly pleasant hour. For shaggy dog story lovers everywhere.

Published