Gravity Boots: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Gilded Balloon Teviot

What a surreal oddity this is, apparently designed for those who thought Sky’s This Is Jinsy was just too mainstream and realistic.

It shouldn’t really work at all, devoid of jokes but full of the sort of drama-school toss that is almost the parody of a bad Fringe show, all dramatic posturing and pretentiously florid language from college kids trying too hard to be weird and baffling.

Yet it’s done with an immense charm and occasional restrained silliness that breaks through the oh-so po-faced performance.

Gravity Boots is essentially a sketch show, but framed in a fantastical storytelling device. Cats  –yes, cats –  Strop and Duffy are left alone with a magical invention: a living story book machine that, when fed with a lightbulb on which a tale is stored, conjures up actual actors to play out the scene.

The felines are also the house band, providing dream-like music to accompany some of the scenes – all of which are entirely odd, but hit and miss on the humour. Yet at their best, this Adelaide-based group evoke some memorable images.

The pathos-riddled goat and leopard, trapped in a zoo and attempting to befriend an avian new inmate is a surprisingly sweet moment – while in stark contrast the song involving pelican-violation is hilarious for its repetitive brutality.

Yet elsewhere, sketches involving a lighthouse keepers wife or a song about a sandwich can’t overcome the bafflement factor.

Somehow, though, this is a show that’s more than the sum of its eccentric parts. It’s more inventive and endearing than cold descriptions of individual scenes might suggest, and the six-strong troupe certainly know their twisted minds and what they want to achieve.

The result is a bold Fringe debut that almost pays off handsomely… but not quite.