How a Man Crumbled

What this production has going for it above all else is that it is the kind of bonkers nonsense you can tell your friends you went to see at the Edinburgh Fringe. Inspired by the works of surrealist Soviet-era poet Daniil Kharms, Lecoq-trained Clout Theatre has created a rambling and incomprehensible piece of silent film-style grotesquery, a world peopled by tortured writers, bent-backed old ladies and sometimes just arbitrary cavorting to the raging crashes and wallops of a modernist cello and piano piece.

Whatever it is, it is performed with style and aplomb, and there is no denying the clowning talent of the trio. George Ramsay just has to lick his lips lasciviously and he's funny. The same goes for Sacha Plaige's and Jennifer Swingler's shock-eyed gurning. When they all don headscarfs and scurry around with wild abandon, the audience bursts into giggles because it seems there is no other reaction than to laugh.

But it all feels disappointingly meaningless. Cartoonish tableaux are interrupted by someone giving a lecture who in turn is interrupted by being pelted with vegetables. Fans of Kharms may find resonance with the themes and the disjointed narrative. For the rest of us, it seems a little like Clout has eaten some Samuel Beckett and some Tim Burton, both of which disagreed badly with them, and vomited them up on stage for your delectation.

There's oodles of dark comic potential lurking in this body bag of macabre renegades and by all means go and see it. Just know what you're letting yourself in for.