Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Shell
Ana Evans and Linnea Scott
Genre: Clown, LGBTQ+, One Person Show
Venue: Zoo Southside
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Shell is a fantastical one person show that weaves between realities and awakens a wanting you may have forgotten was there. Hockey bro Andy is leading a new sex ed club to B(reak) R(eproductive) O(ppression). The Peanut in his hockey bag is hungry for your desires. And the performer beneath it all is cracking open. Part play, part interactive workshop, part unleashing, Shell confronts us with what we know and don’t know about our bodies, their power and what happens when we truly ask for what we want.
Review
SHELL – the title alone already gives us the she and he in the shell of a peanut which we see from the flyer. And of course a peanut usually has two little nuts inside. So there you are. It’s not riffed about in the show, but once you think about it you can’t unthink it. This is a performance about two in one, about gender identity and so much more. You are invited to contribute before you even enter the room and you remain part of the show from beginning to end. Ana Evans the star, their director and co-creator Linnea Scott and the tech team are on their toes throughout, this show is an event, a spectacle, at times intimate, at other times bombastic.
Ana, or Andy, or Peanut is a person, that much is clear. They emerge unexpectedly from a large, black and yellow zip-up travel bag that sits on stage as if casually left there by a passing traveller. First of all, a tiny voice comes over the tannoy. It’s the voice of a girl called Peanut by her mother, sometimes loving, strict, or praising her progress in sport.
Then out of the zip up bag appears a black ice hockey helmet and makes itself known. Slowly the whole tiny person in the prerequisite outfit with shoulder pads and padded suit emerges, grabs the microphone and gets the audience going to a booming tune which everyone there knows and joins in plus arm waves and the lot. Well, one of us didn’t. She was busy getting her ear plugs in. Andy is confidently boomboxing until he realises that being called Peanut by Mum is too cute, oh no, but hey peanuts are also highly toxic at times.
Andy regresses into his bag and comes back out as a crying baby peanut, in a foetus like brown costume, helpless, sweet and asking the audience to participate with just the word ‘Want’. This little gibbering creature manages to invite a lovely tall woman from the audience, Jo, to interact with them on just the word ‘want’. What do you want? We were all invited to write something we really want/ed on a piece of paper before the show and Jo had written she wanted a cat for company. Peanut’s having no idea what a cat is, led to the most adorable interaction between performer and unsuspecting audience member I have seen. “I like cat” said Peanut eventually, finding themselves enveloped in a massive hug.
And that is barely the beginning. So much happens. In the short hour we are asked to draw the five parts of female reproductive anatomy on our paper. At one point, Peanut wants to sleep in the bag again and we are invited to sing its favourite lullaby. After a few attempts we get it right: “no, a bit higher like a cup of tea”. It seems impossible not to love this tiny blonde child person with their high energy, fragility, painted on eyebrows, beard and sharp cheekbones, a diagram of the female reproductive anatomy drawn on their tummy, pardon me, their “chiselled sixpack”. We are introduced to the concept of ASS. “Put it in the ASS” the anonymous safe space where Andy offers up a fast, honest and heart breaking rant on toxic and helpless masculinity. Ana Evan’s acting talent knows no bounds.
And then all is literally unpacked. Andy/Ana takes their top off, tits tightly bound away in skin coloured tape. She unrolls a paper banner against the back wall and just has time to scrawl on it: ‘I want to heal the boy that’s inside me’ before the paper collapses in an overwhelming rush and a movie is projected that ends up with our protagonist standing in front of the wall almost naked and covered in stars.
Ana, for now it’s definitely her turn, wipes off her painted beard. A fragile girl stands in front of us. She asks various members of the audience whether they would be willing to do her small favours and give permissions. She then tells us what her dream was, the thing she always really wanted and slowly she moves into yet another personality. She dons a pair of tight fitting leather trousers, heavy boots.
I don’t want to spoil the last surprise. Suffice it to say that you will have the best experience. Bring your A-game, your willingness to engage in order to truly enjoy this journey with Peanut, Ana, Andy. The song Sweet Child of Mine by Guns n’ Roses will never sound the same to me ever again. You go Ana! Ana! Ana! Ana!
