Theatre review: The Beast, Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61), Edinburgh

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on 24/08/2012 16:18

THAT Stuart Bowden manages to create a work of such unashamedly saccharine tweeness and prevent it sickening the palate is success in itself.

The Beast

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61)

Star rating: * * *

A Fringe veteran with the Lounge Room Confabulators and the Enlightenments, this is his second solo show here after last year’s The World Holds Everyone Apart, Apart From Us. It’s relentlessly cute, a solo adult fairy tale built around Bowden’s deft and likeable storytelling ability and a bunch of quirkily tender comedy songs which are multi-tracked into little indie symphonies via his guitar and loop pedal.

He tells of Winslow, a monster who wears floral dresses and lives in a cave on the edge of town, who will only venture among people if he’s hiding in a postbox or under a car from dusk until dawn.

When a girl falls off her bike in front of his letterbox, though, he builds a crush which is nearly thwarted by his arch-enemy Lance, who has never actually met Winslow. It’s an hour of innocent, heartfelt fun with some truly inventive musical interludes, its stand-out crescendo – Winslow singing that he just wants somebody to dress him, to talk to him and to remember him when he dies – displaying a perfect gift for pathos that far outstrips all that has gone before.

• Until 26 August. Today 8:10pm.