Remember Playdays with Poppy Patch? The tent stop? Why Bird? Well G-Street from newcomers, Isle of Edna is exactly like Playdays…if the writers of Playdays had been high whilst writing it.
Entering Just The Snifter Room at The Mash House a line of boxes and a happy bearded man playing plinky plonk music on a keyboard greets you, as do the stars of the show, Anna Brook-Mitchell and Angela Nesi. The pair met at drama school and have developed the idea of a mockumentary about the gentrification of certain places in London.
The premise of the show is that corporate developers plan to re-develop G-Street’s Community Centre, making it the (G)-spot to be! After the deployment of the plans the audience meet the centre’s caretaker William Bean. William (the cutest old person hand puppet you’ll come across!) has a great deal of pride in his job and he just wants to fix the centre’s wonky sign. The audience journeys with William on his quest to find a rivet to fix his sign, meeting weird and wonderful characters along the way.
G-Street is reminiscent of Avenue Q with its dark, adult undertones, but it also manages to maintain the slick, wipe clean, butter-wouldn’t-melt appearance of Playdays, creating a highly creative, fun and interactive show, that you will feel both appalled and delighted with at the same time.
This group’s incredible talent for storytelling in its various forms becomes apparent as the show progresses and all three performers show an immense amount of talent in the show’s writing, performances, puppetry, songs and dance numbers. There really is something for everyone in this show!
The writing, range of characters, clever call-backs and story loops are worth their weight in gold, and I for one would love to meet more residents and see how the community of G-Street has developed at next years’ Fringe.
****
I’m giving it 4 stars!
Visit G-Street at 7pm everyday (not 15th) at Just the Tonic The Mash House. Tickets are £4-£8 in advance or Pay What You Want.
