You, Me and the World

There are enemas and then there are coffee enemas. Then, of course, there are coffee enemas in shows scheduled twice daily for the duration of the Fringe. Olly Hawes might not have thought this through.

He’s taken over a tiny portacabin round the back of Zoo Southside and plastered its walls with post-it notes, all arranged by category: dance styles, earliest memories, last shags. It’s like he’s trying to catalogue every single thing in existence, from quantum string to the actual universe itself. And to do so, he’s devised a gameshow—part quiz, part party game—to harvest our knowledge for his collection.

That’s us and the world sorted, then. The "me" comes in whimsical confessionals about meeting people, mostly over coffee, and about nightclub courtships, where drunken men dance badly at unimpressed women.

One question recurs: Do people make love in the same way they dance? Deep down though, Hawes is asking another: How—in a system of nanoscopic subparticles; in a world of seven billion people; in a universe 14 trillion light-years wide—does anyone ever find love? And yet, as you and your neighbour ponder dancing and shagging, there’s some small chance you’ll do just that.

This is a scruffball of a show, loveable largely because Hawes is too, with his blustery, puppyish charm. It doesn’t all add up, and it doesn’t do everything it wants, but it’s certainly cute and entertaining – even if form and content feel mismatched at times. After all, nothing says love like a caffeinated colon.