Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Furniture Boys
Emily Weitzman / Rhymes with Purple
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Underbelly Bristo Sq
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An hour that whizzes theatre, comedy, mime, clown, puppetry, stand-up, creative multi-media and a whole lot more into a metaphorical theatrical blender, creating a smoothie of a production that will appeal to lovers of anthropomorphic furniture.
Review
Furniture Boys is writer/performer Emily Weitzman’s new comedy, one that seems to be trying to turn erstwhile boyfriends into one or more of the myriad objects and items of furniture on what is probably one of the most crowded sets you’ll see this Fringe. It’s an hour that whizzes theatre, comedy, mime, clown, puppetry, stand-up, creative multi-media and a whole lot more into a metaphorical theatrical blender, creating a smoothie of a production that concludes with a telling reminder that the pursuit of the creative arts, sometimes for its own sake, is an important part of who we all are – humans have been telling each other stories for millennia, it’s what binds us.
The engaging Weitzman opens up the show with a poem. To a couch. Funnily enough, it’s called “The Couch Poem”, a lament to the piece of furniture centre stage that can’t actually decide whether it’s a couch or a sofa bed and, from the opening stanzas, seems to have a problem with its personal hygiene. It’s a clever way to warm up the audience’s collective brain, flagging that they’re going to have to open their minds if they want to understand (and thereby enjoy) the next sixty minutes of wacky, surreal, absurd and plain old-fashioned weird storytelling.
For that’s what this entertaining hour delivers. Stories, and lots of them. Mainly about Weitzman’s many and varied past boyfriends who take on the guise of objects within her cluttered sitting room. Yep, there’s anthropomorphic furniture in abundance here – lampshades, chairs of all shapes and sizes, a rug that you can’t help but tread on (metaphor alert here!) and a variety of model furniture that draws out a series of genuinely groanworthy but very inventive puns.
We mustn’t forget the broken chair either, one with which Weitzman cannot bear to part, which she caresses with a tenderness showing the object’s place in her affections (cue further metaphor alert for some earlier unrequited relationship, or something). She’s even filmed taking her broken chair for, erm, a swim. Yes, you did read that last bit correctly. Wood floats, so is a natural swimming companion.
It all sounds (and feels) completely off the wall. And, at one level, it is. But that’s the beauty of this piece. My random exit poll of audience engagement revealed that the overwhelming majority of attendees recognised the clever surrealism and absurdism that’s at the core of the piece. Key to this is Weitzman’s superb delivery, her expressive voice – alternately seductive, angry, happy, sad – and she’s never afraid to use silence, often for what seems like an age. She’s also not afraid to shower her audience with words, words and more words. And there’s possibly one of the weirdest – no, quaintest – pieces of puppetry at this Fringe as she dons four sock puppet couches (on each of her four limbs) to perform a chanson d’amour that’s as amusing as it is tender.
Directed by quiet assurance by Kate Doyle, this is a measured and controlled piece of theatre that has an undercurrent of tenderness and poignancy, masked by its endemic surface silliness. I, for one, will be looking at my solid wood kitchen furniture in a whole new light from this evening.
Recommended for those who are happy to go with the flow and turn the dial on their suspension of disbelief “thermostat” to maximum.
