Theatre review: Wild Bore

It shows three eminent female performers, otherwise fully clad, thrusting their bare bottoms through the back of three folding chairs, in support of the theory – wildly popular among those taking part in the Fringe, for obvious reasons – that when critics give a show a bad or dismissive review, they are talking through their a**ses.

As theses go, of course, this is reactionary tosh; critics are the only people in the whole theatre system paid – or, increasingly, not paid – to write about the actual quality of the work, rather than to join in a marketing-driven orgy of self-promotion and mindless preview puffery.

For a ribald hour, though, the ladies of Wild Bore – Ursula Martinez, Zoe Coombs Marr and Adrienne Truscott – enjoy themselves mightily chucking their idea around the stage, while Danielle Brustman’s design occasionally achieves Dali-esque depths of visually vivid surrealism.

The show makes one valuable point, which is that if you are going to write a negative review, you should at least pay the artists the compliment of assuming their bad work is intentional, rather than merely accidental.

Apart from that though, the show is not much more than an hour-long demonstration of thespian self-obsession, taken to vaguely obscene, although occasionally entertaining, extremes; wallow in it if you must, I’d say, but don’t expect it to get a good review.

Until 27 August. Today 10am.