Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Low Down
A smart, high-energy debut from State ae That Theatre – pacy, inventive, playful theatre that is, above all, hilarious.
Review
A young woman in a party dress slumps in an office chair, lipstick smeared, arms tied. This is no thriller – though it is thrilling theatre.
Bambi, a nepo-baby socialite, has been kidnapped by Oliver, a small-time stooge, so “your dad can pay my boss” and they can all go home. The two are trapped in a hotel room, thrown together by forces beyond their control. “This isn’t about us.” But it very much is.
Ostensibly a dark comedy about Stockholm syndrome, the hostage falling in love with their captor, this is also a play about class – two people from different socio-economic planets finding connection. But the main thing to say about Ollipops, penned by Dunfermline playwright Eilidh Macdonald and performed by Ben Waddell and Olivia Napier, is that it is very, very funny.
Both actors give impressive turns, but with more work to do, Napier really stands out. A gifted physical comedian, she commands the space even while tied to a chair for most of the show. Waddell is the believable straight man to Napier’s wild caricature of self-absorbed youth. The dynamic really works – helped by the fact that both have excellent timing. At times, the actors appear on the verge of corpsing. They’re having as much fun as we are. A sequence with a Pot Noodle (“the gift that keeps on giving”) becomes riotous theatre.
Napier’s direct addresses to the audience – gently acknowledging those lost in laughter – make no sense within the plot, but are so well pitched that it doesn’t matter. Sound and lighting are deployed for laughs too: a night passes in a blink, lights dimming for a second, followed by a cock crow.
Beneath the absurdity lies something more tender. Oliver’s terse account of his life – “born to a shite family, lived in a shite house, went to a shite school, got a shite job” – is affecting. And his bond with Bambi, unlikely though it seems, gives the piece a human core.
I would have liked more of this pathos, and the ending of the show felt a little rushed – it could have done with being ten minutes longer. And some plot points felt a little unclear, such as when Oliver (by now Ollipops) suddenly agrees with Bambi that they should run away together.
But Ollipops remains a smart, high-energy debut from State ae That Theatre – pacy, inventive, playful – and, above all, hilarious.
