Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
This one-man comic play, told at breakneck speed and featuring West Side Story-like dance-numbers, is highly entertaining
It’s as if Joseph Morpurgo had never been away. The Londoner made a splash on the fringe a decade ago with several high-concept comedy shows, of which thrift-shop source material and multimedia presentation were standout features. After a nine-year absence, the same is true of Highlander 70, a one-man comic play built exclusively around an American high-school yearbook salvaged from half a century ago. Drawing on that book’s text and (mainly) innocent black-and-white photographs of wholesome teens, Morpurgo cobbles together a breakneck tale of dorky David Moon’s last day of school. He must navigate assembly, the big game, graduation – and then he’s free. “What could possibly go wrong?”
In Morpurgo’s telling, plenty, as our juvenile hero (face painted grey, the better to resemble his monochrome original) embarks on a quest to recover his missing diary, which contains mortifying evidence of a crush on schoolmate Beth. Standing in his way, the school’s martinet principal, its bully Roscoe Peltz and his crew of unconvincing tough guys, and a dance-hall full of dangerously intoxicated adolescents.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
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