Theatre review: Mighty, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Mighty, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh * * *
At least, that’s the question posed by solo performer Jack Britton, who – at five foot four-and-three-quarter inches – has been dealing with the effects of this prejudice since he was at school, and one of the popular television hits of the day brought him the nickname ‘Little Britton’.
He tells us exactly how heightism has affected his life over the years, which should illustrate to all that discrimination against a person based on their arbitrary physical characteristics come in (no pun intended) all sizes. To Britton’s credit, however, Mighty is also a show which clearly puts across his hurt and frustration over the years with humour and theatrical nous.
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Hide AdPitching somewhere between storytelling, stand-up and gig theatre, he uses a loop pedal to compose short songs about his experiences on the spot, and through the use of cue-cards and audience interaction he elaborates upon everything from the systematic rejection of shorter men on dating site Tindr, to the prevalent belief in “short man syndrome”, to the plethora of Twitter hate speech directed at shorter men (which, it turns out, is not in defiance of their terms of use, because they don’t mention heightism).
If the playful gimmickry of the show is somewhat overdone, the facts about the effect of a man’s height on everything from salary to suicide rate are grimly sobering.
Until 26 August