Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Carpet Muncher
Jo Morrigan Black
Genre: Spoken Word
Venue: Scottish Storytelling Centre
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Poetry aside, this manages a discordant effect upon its audience. Intimate and close, it manages to reach the audience but at times there is a disconnection between each of the costumes’ stories which leaves you wondering about the narrative pull. Technically this has a lot to commend it because of the way in which we are intimately inside and the costume of Mothman is particularly effective and impressive.
Review
The conceit of using various costumes to open up different narrative structures poetically is an interesting one. To an extent this works well as Black is a very interesting storyteller, holding our attention throughout. Even though each of these verses seems to be hold an individual tale and not be overly connected between, there is a passivity in our accepting of this which works.
It does tend to meander, however, and Black has a very singular narrative style. It tends to be laid-back, relatively neutral, with unquestioning enthusiasm. It requires a slightly more dramatic approach to find those moments of both despair and silence in amongst the tales.
This is a worthy piece of written poetry which could become a very important spoken piece of work. It didn’t always hit the mark, though was effective enough. What it did make me wonder was whether spoken poetry, on its own should be characterless, and that would be a shame. I wondered if the poetry was simply unsuitable for theatrical purposes and consistently disagreed with myself. It meant that this queer cabaret before me had an effect which was to make me question the purpose and theatricality of form. And so, whilst I may not have connected with the narrative I was connected to the idea of how that challenge should be presented.
The costume was highly impressive. I loved how when hands were being moved to illuminate points that you were seeing, not one, not two, but several limbs move at the same time. I don’t know exactly how a moth moves; however, I got a feeling the impressive characterisation desired a connection but was sufficiently aloof that they wished to have my respect. They certainly got that.
But I wanted much more. I wanted to know about that hot tub connection. I wanted to feel more challenge over my own views and feel that this was taking the subject matter of discomfort and placing it centrally upon my lap. Given the intimate nature of where we were, metaphorically, that was possible and driving this into a place where discomfort could actually be a means and a method of delivery would enhance it.
