Mamoru Iriguchi
The Marlborough Theatre
May 19
Oh we adored Mamoru Iriguchi. He’s so sweet and geeky and utterly charming. The tech in the show is seriously clever although it’s about as mixed media, tech heavy Heath Robinson as you can get, and gets utterly bonkers by the end, but Iriguchi keep his boundless energy and charm beaming out.
The show is actually pretty educational, which makes it all the more fun and although posed as a sex education lesson for 13 year olds, a pretence that Iriguchi never breaks out of, it’s as fun and as it is suggestive and all in the best possible taste. He’s utterly inclusive and makes you think about gender and sexuality in a daft imaginative way.
It’s lovely to watch a show about reproduction and the history of gender that’s as queer as can be and still be fun. No earnest twaddle in this show but buckets of bonkers segues into an alterative YouTube world of mermaid online councillors who end up in a pretty wonderful denouement that had my jaw dropping as fast as the laughter rose up out of the audience.
The whole audience gasped and laughed when Mermaid Le Little made her at-home appearance, it was a superb visual joke, folding in all the previous narrative in a rather neat but totally surreal ending. The use of costume, media, tech and projections, live, pre-recorded and interactive filmed bits between, with some devastatingly funny ad-libs, all brings to light the cunning mind behind the on stage charm and the easy informative way this informed and educated ex-zoologist shares his interests.
This is a fun and engaging show with a kind of serious undertow, not quite sure what that might be, but when a performer is a charming and engaging as this who cares.
This has to be my most perfect fringe show to date and I’ll be keeping an eye out for Mamoru Iriguchi when they next make it this far south.
The Marlborough Theatre continue this festival and fringe to procure and provide an impressive breadth of queer+ and just plain odd talent to ensure there’s some serious alternate cabaret, quality music and theatre for Queers, poc, LGBT+, trans and non binary and even some for us jaded old cis Queens to get excited about. Make sure you support them, because they support you!
For more info on this show see the website here:
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