Princess Plimsole ***

Part fairy-tale, part morality play, part maddeningly fey, part beautifully inventive, this will delight some and I suspect infuriate others. Indeed about 15% of the audience walked out of the performance I saw ( though admittedly that was only two people ) while several others clearly enjoyed every moment.

Simon Kain is the Author figure who sets out to tell us a story about the eponymous princess in the Valley of the Golden Lily, a magical kingdom where apple juice is served by humming bees and people get around in hot air balloons powered by mechanical brass giraffes. In language encrusted with elaboration, whose cumulative effect at times becomes almost incantatory, he tells how the princess , a wide eyed Gemma Brockis - determines to visit the Great Beyond in company with her butler (Tom Lyall) who, for no discernible reason, is called Breakfast. There is much rumination on the nature of stories, truth, small lies and big lies. There is a great deal of inventive use of improbable props (a miniature glitterball built into the butler’s lapel for example) and the performance is extremely carefully paced and judged for all that it appears charmingly ramshackle. In the end the Great Beyond turns out to be rather a dissapointment; ah, doesn’t it always.

The company, incarnate, who are behind this show and who have had previous success on the Fringe have, you feel, a very particular vision of the kind of theatrical language they want to use. If they haven’t quite nailed it yet, it is intriguing to see them trying.