What Does Stuff Do? at Edinburgh Fringe ★★★½
★★★½ What Does Stuff Do? | ZOO Playground | Aug 11-27 | 3:15pm
Or more appropriately, How Does Juggling Work? Fun and educational hour tackling the nuts and bolts of throwing and catching.
You’ll perhaps find more intellectual engagement elsewhere at the Fringe, but this entertaining and enlightening insight into the art form that is juggling is nevertheless a diverting 60 minutes in the company of Robin Dale. Some impressive tricks – especially with ping pong paddle(s) and ball – and a foray into water juggling serve as under-the-bonnet illustrations of how this discipline really works. Juggling notation blurs into algebraic formulae, first written and then performed before your very eyes. There’s some nice work unpacking uses of objects and space, and the relationship of performer to object – and while the whole thing feels a little more ‘How Do They Do That?’ than ‘Prepare To Be Wowed!’, there’s always room for something more subtle in any packed Fringe programme.
I am Joint Editor at To Do List. I like: nice pubs, film marathons, not doing real marathons, bad comedy, plays/musicals with shorter second halves, and the Oxford comma.
