FringeReview Scotland 2025
An evening with Will and Tess.
Will Ford Turner; Tess Outdoors
Genre: character comedy, Poetry-Based Theatre
Venue: Theatre 118, Glasgow.
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
Taking the first half, Will Ford Turner performs his own specially written material, which begins theatrically with him hiding behind the backdrop and introducing himself before he launches in to pop culture related poetry with great vigour. The second half is Tess playing characters from in an environmental themed performance which includes being Mrs Beech in charge of the beech trees: it manages to hit some marks, but not all of them.
Review
Overall, between the two, it is an evening which, packaged together, works well enough.
Will has a very engaging presence, which comes across very well on stage. His poetry is rhyming performance poetry, which has many pop cultural references and some local references which hit particularly well. His presence on stage takes us through the comic interludes of his life, with particular favourites being Public Schoolboys love World Music and the haiku. Finishing with his song, Let’s Connect. it manages to while away a pretty decent half hour in his company, which manages to engage the audience in a very charming manner.
In the second half, Tess Outdoors manages to carry through some of that goodwill into her performance. To be fair it is a more difficult stretch for a performer but the audience on the night were really caught up with her characterisation and performance. Accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, projected onto the screen at the side worked well enough. Where it needed a little bit more oomph was it needed Tess to have more confidence in her ideas. We could have had less deciduous versus Evergreen and more storytelling. Less beech trees and more the wannabe TV presenter. At times it felt there was a hesitancy which led to slight stumbles. The environment can either be that which excites you or divides a room. Here it had people onboard which could have been more exploited by moving between characters more smoothly, having the confidence to tonally change and vary the pace more. There some really good ideas, technique and skill here. Just need to sell it more to smash it better.
This was hardly Shakespeare or Greek Tragedy but an enjoyable evening in the company of skilled performers. Once again in the new environment of Theatre 118, even with the cold, it was worthwhile. The one discordant note was the person who stood to take pictures which distracted. No idea who they were or why they were doing it but at one point they had taken the photo on their phone and we were granted the opportunity through nicely poised facial expressions to show us what she thought of the visual record she had just taken. It drew me away form the stage. Not sure if I was the only one, but nobody paid to see it.
