Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Puddles and Amazons
Made in Scotland showcase.
Genre: LGBTQ, Storytelling
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A boy eats an ice lolly on a cold beach. Something has gone wrong, he isn’t normally allowed to eat this much ice cream.
Review
It took me just a few productions to come to the conclusion that death is a theme at this year’s Fringe. Shows like My Mother’s Funeral,the play, and the Apocalypse edges nearer in plays like the Bellringers, it seems to form the bedrock of many plays. Chief of them all is the tenth anniversary production of Every Brilliant Thing , which seems to have had an effect on much storytelling. Puddles and Amazons shares some qualities with Duncan McMillan’s classic. Mother has died and father and son have to negotiate their relationship without ever talking about their grief or feelings.
What distinguishes Puddles and Amazons, however, is that Guy Woods is a folly artist, and the audience work with him and helps to create the soundtrack to the tale. Another original element is how much water makes up the human body, and we lose 5% more when we grow up. Woods reckons it’s piss, but I’m not sure how much that adds to the tale. It is a very wet production and, after the boy nearly chokes on an ice lolly on the beach, the boy is cold, until , many years later, with his male lover, he has to clean his urine from his Grandmother’s carpet, an original but not subtle metaphor for warming up!
Woods is an effective and engaging performer, with a good vulnerability that drives the fractured life forward. We create the sounds, among other things, of a laughter track for Friends, which the boy stubbornly watches as his father tries desperately to talk to him, the sound of a noisy school and many more recognisable life backgrounds. This is a unique element, and he breaks the fourth wall with warmth. However, it does break the rhythm of the story a little, the piece doesn’t flow, (no pun intended), as well as it should.
There are some wonderful images created, especially the loneliness and emotional release of a shower, the only place where you can cry in private. But I felt that the play stepped back from exploring deep, real grief, the stakes are not raised high enough, and coming out felt more incidental than central.
In saying that, this is a solid hour of entertainment, and the audience are very much made to feel part of the story. With a more confrontational element, grief being tackled head on, this could develop into a more visceral experience.
