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Dining Room at Gilded Balloon Teviot
Paul Howard, the man behind Bad Sisters and The Young Offenders, brings his particular brand of sharp, dark comedy to the Fringe with The Shit Table, tucked away in the Dining Room at Gilded Balloon Teviot. Last time we were in that room it was for Crocodile Rock (review coming your way shortly), so it’s fast becoming a bit of a home from home for us.
If you’ve ever planned a wedding, you’ll know exactly what a shit table is. It’s the table you build out of the people you can’t leave off the guest list but also can’t quite bear to seat anywhere sensible. Here, four guests find themselves plonked at exactly that table, and over the course of an hour each one unpacks their own reason for ending up there. Turns out none of them are quite who you think they are at first glance, and their lives are never quite the same again by the time the reception’s done with them.
It’s a genuinely fun hour. This particular run only had four dates at the Fringe this year, which feels like a real shame because the cast were clearly having a whale of a time up there, and that energy is infectious. It does tip into slapstick here and there, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a show built on escalating chaos, but it’s a noticeably different gear from the sharper character work elsewhere.
And speaking of character work, Celeste was the one who properly got me. She’s the evil bitch of the group, and given that I’ve built something of a reputation myself for being terrifying and short with people (in the nicest possible way, obviously), she felt like a woman after my own heart. Brilliantly drawn, brilliantly played.
You can tell within about ten minutes that this is written by the Bad Sisters guy. That same knack for building believable, flawed people and then quietly turning the screws on them is all over this. It’s genuinely excellent writing, wrapped up in a tight, well performed hour.
A good, solid Fringe show. Nicely written, well cast, and one I properly enjoyed.