theatre and tonic ★★★★
Truly one of the greatest joys of the Edinburgh Fringe is that anything is possible. Quite literally, anything. This year, Assembly Hall (housed within a nearly 200-year-old School of Divinity building) is home to Fringe hit, Swamplesque. Yes, that’s a burlesque show based on the 2001 Academy Award-winning movie Shrek… and it’s exactly as chaotic as you would imagine.
If you’re the kind of audience member who would already consider buying a ticket to a Shrek burlesque show, then Swamplesque is everything you could hope for… and more. The dances are impressive, camp and in-your-face, and the remarkable commitment to their performances is what makes this cast so remarkable. Seeing Shrek pirouetting and attempting a split while ‘Holding out for a Hero’ plays in the background is truly the sort of entertainment that the Fringe does best.
As far as the audience is concerned, the show is a winner from start to finish. Every joke was met with joyous laughter, each song saw the crowd cheering them on, and even minor characters had their moment to shine as the star of the show. The Magic Mirror’s rollerskating solo to Michael Jackson’s ‘Man In the Mirror’ was a particularly on-the-nose kind of joke… but when you’re in the audience at Swamplesque, that’s exactly the kind of comedy that you’re there for. A lot of the non-Shrek jokes in the show were pop culture references from the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Though these were funny in the moment, they would need to be updated if the show ran for a significant length of time, as the references could become dated very quickly.