Dundee Fringe 2025

For An Eye?

Karina Productions

Genre: Comedic, Horror, One Person Show, Theatre

Venue: Sweet Venues at Dundee Fringe

Festival: Dundee Fringe

Low Down

Review

We walk into the venue to be met with a scene of chaos upon the stage. A large sheet of tarpaulin lies covered and surrounded by a mish mash of random detritus; broken household objects, a selection of hats, musical instruments and more. By the end of the show, I was fairly convinced that this chaos was probably a pretty good representation of the inside of writer and performer Will Oliver’s brain.

We learn that the disarray is a shop of sorts. Oliver primarily plays The Shopkeeper, who is dressed like he stood too close to an exploding jumble sale, topped with Sweeney Todd-esque hair and an all important patch over his right eye. The Shopkeeper seeks an absence with which to barter, but in the absence of an absence, will gladly trade in anything, because commerce must be facilitated, and the rent needs to be paid.

This is no normal bric a brac outlet though. The store exists in a liminal space; an unsettling dreamscape into which enter a host of other characters, also played by Oliver. They are a disparate crew, including amongst others inside-out horses, washed up cabaret singers and seemingly at one point Oliver’s own psyche. These characters’ scenes are punctuated by frequent demands for the rent from the Landlord, who is brought to life through the medium of Oliver screaming into a snare drum. Business has been slow though, and so without more conventional ways of settling his debts, our shopkeeper must fall back on what he does have. Such as parts of his own body.

It is a fascinating bit of theatre. It’s the sort of piece that will leave audiences debating amongst themselves exactly what was going on and what the deeper meaning behind it was, and no doubt different people will come up with different theories, all or none of which might be correct. To begin with it seems like a comedy, but while the laughs remain constant throughout, The Shopkeeper and the space in which he inhabits becomes less and less stable as the play progresses. As time, or whatever passes for time in this world goes by, the horror ramps up, culminating in the horrific truth of what lies behind the eyepatch, and why.

Oliver’s performance is a joy throughout. He is charming and affable, gently riffing with audience members alongside the script. Despite this, the audience never quite feels safe in his presence, or in the space he has created. No matter how funny he is, or indeed how much of a victim the Shopkeeper may appear to be, you can never quite shake the feeling of unease, which personally speaking is exactly what I want from my horror!

There are multimedia aspects as well, as Oliver uses a looping pedal at various points in the show which builds to a discordant soundscape at the finale. There is also a deceased uncle who communicates with the Shopkeeper through the medium of a vintage slide projector. This projector actually malfunctioned during the performance I saw, but in truth, this actually fitted with the general chaos of the show anyway, and Oliver was able to incorporate it into proceedings almost seamlessly.

The writing is great as well, veering from hilarious to harrowing and back again, and peppered with meta nods to theatrical principles. It’s the sort of show I could happily watch over and over again, as I’m quite sure I would take something different from it every time I did, and probably never get to the truth of it. If indeed there is one. Perhaps the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Whoever’s eye that might be…

Published September 17, 2025 by Iain Martin