5 stars

THE SCOTSMAN

Fringe 2023

Kate Copstick

If you have missed the many magical years of Twonkey at the Fringe then get yourself along to the Voodoo Rooms and experience the most creative crazy in showbusiness.

For those of us who have accompanied the man on his many adventures over the years this is like a wonderful reunion of many of your past loves. Sing along with The Flying Tailor as we chant “the worst part of the orange is the rind” before the song takes a gothic dive. Tiny Al Capone makes a welcome return and, just as quickly, is tossed aside to make way for some mushroom related silliness with a Goat Girl In Trouble.

Yes, we are talking drugs. But we are fine because we have moved on to a song in the style of Kraftwerk. My notes say 'Galashiels', 'Jaffa Cakes' and 'bushy eyes'. It is tricky to make sense of Twonkey, once he gets the bit between his teeth. But sense is overrated. This 'best of' show is like catching comedy lightning in a jar. Custard Club - his abandoned musical love letter to custard – has long haunted Twonkey and he shares some extracts with us here. Or tries to.

The entire room goes into meltdown now. This is a glorious disaster. This is clowning at its very best. I cannot remember seeing an audience so reduced to rocking back and forth as tears of laughter flowed. The stage is littered with devastated puppets and props by this point and and Twonkey is muttering something about trying to make it slicker tomorrow.

The fortune telling ship's wheel makes predictions, Chris Hutchinson gets a makeover, we play a fascinating game entitled Sniff My Cottage and all five of us in the audience leave bathed in seratonin.

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4 stars North West End Roger Jacobs

There will be few Fringe sights this year more unsettling than The Wobbly Waiter, a dismembered, dead-eyed puppet & frying pan fixture, advancing down the aisle… to you. To the strains of the Custard Club song. Except, a short while later, The Ship’s Wheel appeared. The relief in the room was palpable once a woman near the front agreed to take the expensive sausage and two fellows on the left the Huge Red Knickers. Their most intimate adventures successfully described by the mind-reading ship’s appliance (despite one denial), Twonkey returned to the stage to continue something resembling a revue of his greatest moments from the last ten or so years. Nine more than he’d ever envisaged when putting his first show on in 2010. Might’ve been 2011 but everything’s fluid in the Twonkeyverse.

The evening might have begun on a negative with a song celebrating The Flying Tailor, a parachute innovator who died jumping off the Eiffel Tower in 1912 attempting to test-fly his life-saving device, but it provided plenty of wriggle room for more cheerful stuff. Tiny Al Capone featured, Idle Goat Girl too and we were advised to try booking a ski holiday after taking an Ecstasy tab. Which led seamlessly to one of Twonkey’s catchiest laments ‘Moosk’, inspired by a tormented night in Galashiels after a pre-bed Ovaltine. A highlight was the touching duet with Chris Hutchison concerning the World War 2 incident when Twonkey’s wife ran off with Mussolini. Amidst broken and breaking props and a scratchy soundtrack Twonkey persevered, even finding time for a competition, the audience member guessing (nearly) correctly the origin of the cheese rewarded with an in-your-face performance from the revered Transylvanian Finger Fantasies.

The only twitch missing was the customary stomp-out from a baffled, frustrated audience member, livid at what their partner had dragged them to.

4 stars Entertainment Now Avantika Sood

Twonkey’s greatest twitch is not explicitly pointed out. Perhaps it’s a bit in his show, perhaps it’s the whole show, perhaps it’s not in the show at all. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take away from the fact that you can count on Twonkey to point out absolutely ridiculous, somehow-devised nuggets of whimsey and nonsense.

Armed with an army of some of the most disturbing puppet contraptions you’d probably ever have the pleasure(?) to lay your eyes on, Twonkey presents his musical show and tell. It’s an amalgamation of musical numbers that talk about a lot of nothing, and bits in between that talk about a lot of nothing too. But it’s the nothing that makes you chuckle, or laugh whole-heartedly if it’s your thing.

Unfamiliar to the Twonkey universe, I’ve seen described as weird and wonderful, the hour was a massive suspension from any reality I ever knew. The only thing that resembles familiarity are the melodic crashes of sound, making up the numbers he sings to. They share a similar DNA to the surrealist music making of the 60s and 70s. As mentioned, the lyrics are whacky and paint whacky landscapes of his imagination.

The show is most definitely out there, out there in a land so far away, semi materialised in the Twonkey imagination. There’s no formula, rhyme or reason, just a whole lot of whimsy and a self-aware scrappiness that engulfs the performer’s repertoire. The talent it takes to make utter nonsense become the content of a show is entirely impressive. Not to mention the obvious musical proficiency that is intentionally downplayed by playfulness, making it all the more wonderful to experience. If you give it a go, there’s no doubt you’ll walk away either in splits, impressed, confused, or all of the above. It’s not your typical show, it’s on the alternative side of alternative, but I reckon that’s what makes the Fringe for some of us.

Twonkey’s Greatest Twitch @Voodoo Rooms Ballroom 6:30 until the 27th of August (apart from Monday's).