Terrence the T-Rex overview – dino entertainers lock horns | Edinburgh pageant 2023
Is the Edinburgh fringe large enough for rival comedy exhibits about warring youngsters’s entertainers? In fact! This amiable two-hander for over-14s is ready within the treacherous world of dinosaur-themed events and makes a lunchtime different to the Pleasance Courtyard hit String v Spitta (starring Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Ed MacArthur).
Carrying home made scaly dungarees and a T-Rex cranium masks, nerdy Terrence is traipsing via the celebration circuit with a song-and-joke-filled act that’s fairly prehistoric itself. He’s unimpressed when his company sends alongside fellow dino performer Tri-Sarah-Tops, sporting a three-horned bonnet, to jolly it up – and much more unimpressed when she will get larger laughs together with her lewd materials.
To make issues worse, his ex Daphne the Diplodocus has her personal present that’s head and shoulders above his. In the meantime, his revered Nationwide Geographic (lovingly dubbed “Nat Geo”) retains publishing analysis that makes his act look inaccurate.
Because the duo workforce up for a present that takes place amid the haggis hurl and tug of warfare at Inverkeithing’s Highland Video games, author Alex Zawalnyski has enjoyable sustaining the strain between uptight Terrence (performed by himself) and upfront Sarah (Morgan Ferguson). His default mode is delusional vanity whereas hers is deadpan bemusement. Terrence deploys Reithian rules to his performances and studiously warms up his roars earlier than taking the stage; Sarah desires a life past dinosaurs however is clearly not but positive what. His strained relationship with Daphne (whom Sarah idolises) is mirrored in her estrangement from her father, a legend within the dinosaur world and Terrence’s private hero. If Daphne specifically had been to be additionally performed on stage, the comedy would rocket.
The content material of the youngsters’s exhibits themselves could possibly be dropped at life with cringier humour, particularly Terrence’s solo act, which bombs at a seven-year-old’s celebration in a gap scene that could possibly be sharper. However Zawalnyski’s resistance to any tidy romcom conclusion is welcome and neither character is proscribed to serving to the opposite develop. Sarah, beautifully performed by Ferguson, emerges as each weak and clear-eyed about Terrence’s self-absorption. Directed by Laura Hounsell for Apropos Theatre, it’s a candy, low-key present the place the laughter seldom roars however is at all times heat.