Salvador Kent
By many a critical standard, Twonkey’s Soft December Night in Talahasee is a terrible piece of theatre. It gives the impression of being a plotless, disoriented, borderline offensive, nihilistic, frustrating, antagonising, totally meaningless show. It is however, my pick of Dundee Fringe.
Cult-classic Twonkey is dead and his grieving widow Twonketta lives on the ancestral lands of fairies where they have built a giant theme park. None of this is visually relayed but you do get a macbook, a smoke machine and a massive pile of puppets underneath which is the Diary of Anne Frank. Paul Vickers is responsible for the conception, direction and execution of this evening’s ‘entertainment’. Vickers does all the sound effects, all the puppets, and puts a foot on the smoke machine in case the room wasn’t already like the thick fog on the Blu-ray cover of Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman.
Paul Vickers is a legend, and the performance is utterly unique. It is a singing, puppeteering tour-de-force with philosophical diversions and a constant stream of dadaist nonsense beyond the realms of possibility. Vickers lost the bit of the story we were at, found it again, corpsed almost constantly and still had us exactly where we needed to be. About halfway through the show whether this was funny or not became totally unimportant. This was such a profound anti-humour that it transcended that altogether.
You’ll never see a work of art quite like this unless Vickers is at the helm. It is a work which takes the automatic feeling of the very best Surrealism and puts it through the industrial meat grinder of the 20th Century. To watch any Twonkey is to see a work seemingly automatic is filled with hidden tricks of interpretation and performance. Theatrical audiences are strange creatures, always searching for meaning. Vickers weaponises that, maybe unconsciously, but it makes for a thrilling hour. In the moment, you don’t feel any of this. You’re laughing out loud. Or maybe just a bit confused. Or overwhelmed. It’s remarkable.
This is the epitome of a Fringe show. It’s Fringe from before the Fringe factory, the one that churns out all the four and five star reviews, the transfers, the schmoozing. It is to watch a performer you couldn’t imagine anywhere else draw the pathos of their show from the Diary of Anne Frank. At the end of that, she writes “I keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if… if only there were no other people in the world.” Twonketta quotes it to us, and just like that Vickers tells us the show is over.
By many a critical standard Twonkey’s Soft December Night in Talahasee is a terrible piece of theatre. But what the hell is the point in standards if they blind us from the value in this. This won’t be for everyone but it is legitamately beautiful. A truimph.
Recommended Drink: Beer. Lots of it. Dundee has loads of great pubs.
Performances of Twonkey’s Soft December Night in Talahasee have concluded at Dundee Fringe 2026.
LiMBO PiNS
Ellen Leslie
