Adam Larter: L'Art Nouveau

Adam Larter needs serious help. Or, to be more specific, he needs serious comedy help, as this show just wouldn’t work so well without the input of some ludicrously-costumed guest performers, plus several hardy audience members.

That said, the bespectacled art-clown clearly spent many a happy hour putting L’Art Nouveau together. The awkward few minutes before his arrival are brightened considerably by musing on the diverse homemade devices that litter the stage, many of them fashioned from tubular crisp containers. As he puts it, “once you prop, you can’t stop.”

Pringles are a curious theme throughout. Umpteen customized tubes eventually reveal their surprising new innards; there are masks featuring the mustachioed Mr Pringle, and an ominous black Pringle-tube tower. Which admittedly nobody notices until Joz Norris—Larter's partner in the anarchic duo Weirdos—pops on dressed as a pipe-playing, dire-warning hag.

The results of those endeavors are admirably silly, and occasionally slightly hazardous to their amateur-acrobat creator (who says he hired a personal trainer to get fit for the show). Handy tip: you may need to acquaint yourself with the songs 'Born to be Wild', 'Kiss from a Rose' and the video game Sonic the Hedgehog for certain big set-pieces to make any sense. The bit involving the aforementioned Steppenwolf hit is one of the most stupidly brilliant things you'll see this Fringe.

So, no, this show will probably not change your life, although there is a heartfelt let’s-make-art speech towards the end. And, ‘nuff props to Larter, he’s done an awful lot of recycling.