The Road to Endorphia - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Imagine, if you will, sitting in a small pub, where a friendly local starts chatting to you about the time he ran from John O’Groats to Land’s End. He digresses frequently, repeats himself and loses track of where he is in the story. The tale is interesting, but not particularly entertaining, but it passes the time before you set off on your way.

Then imagine that local character telling the same story on stage in the hot back room of the same noisy little pub and you have Joe Donnachies’s Road to Endorphin.

It is an achievement running the thousand or so miles in 47 days and shows the determination of character and optimistic spirit that Donnachie obviously possesses in spades, retelling his story with the glee and pride of a toddler after his first day at school.

This was the opening show in the run so you have to forgive a certain level of bedding-in nerves and stumbles, but there seems to have been a complete lack of planning and the structure falls apart rapidly as the show begins to overrun – leaving only eight minutes to tell the last two-thirds of the story. Perhaps the numerous digressions comparing every cheesecake in each town he visited is an unnecessary and time-consuming mistake.

With a bit of thought and preparation, many easy improvements would be possible, such as a visible map of the route to give the audience – and Donnachie – a better idea of how far into the journey he is. The exclusion of the needless emptying of his bag at the start of the show to show us his sleeping bag and midge repellent would save him a decent five minutes to allow him to add some much needed jokes.

If this is a journey you plan to take yourself then you may be interested in some of the factual elements that Donnachie has to share but if you have no interest in endurance runs, then this is not a trip worth taking.