Sunday Morning

This moving one man show from South Africa's Hello Elephant theatre company opens, somewhat bizarrely, like the starting sequence of an imaginary sitcom. James Cunningham's hapless protagonist rises from his bed and goes about preparing himself for another fraught day on Earth. Before long he is bickering with his partner and, just as things look set to escalate, spills his morning coffee all over himself. Good-time soul music plays as we watch him mime out this wacky spectacle.

In essence, this is the same shtick we've seen onscreen from rubber-faced funnymen like Jim Carrey: hyperactive miming, gurning and comedy noises, punctuated by cloying sentimentality. If you struggled to make it through Liar, it’d be wise to give this a wide berth. Fringe-goers who believe that moralising and frenetic, borderline-irritating antics can go hand in hand, will find much to admire in this story of a reluctant father who learns to embrace the hands fate deals him.

Set in a realistically ghettoised Johannesburg, the exact circumstances that trigger our hero's epiphany are wonderfully dark and poignant. The piece's ultimate suggestion that having babies is a cure for immobility and inertia, however, leaves a slightly unpleasant taste in the audience's collective mouth.