The fairytale village of Massiveville is boomtown. Everyone has got their golden egg Isa and an easy mortgage, there is a luxury car dealership in a mock Tudor farmhouse and the well-funded youth club is a place where local teenagers can “feel each other’s genitals in a safe environment”.
But now everything has gone bust. Massiveville’s beanstalk has come down, there is a ruddy great dead giant causing a serious traffic problem for DI Clive, the local bobby, and Jack, the 11-year-old Beanstalk business tycoon, seems to have scarpered. How are the locals to deal with their trauma? Some opt to make war on the next village, but others decide to “start a conversation with ourselves” via a verbatim play directed by the local drug addict, Daz.
The latest from the ever-inventive puppet company Blind Summit is a clever satire that offers a puppet-eyed view of the economic crash. It also celebrates and mercilessly sends up London Road-style verbatim theatre in which, following some disaster or cataclysmic event, the locals are invited to share their thoughts and feelings. In this instance, Blind Summit really are giving “a voice to the little people” because no member of the cast is more than a few metres tall. They are all puppets.
Glorious ones, too. Blind Summit populate Massiveville with a range of distinctive characters straight out of an episode of Midsomer Murders; from the Daily Mail-reading pub landlady to the local squire and ineffective, troubled vicar. This technically nimble show offers several layers of access, from the theatrical in-jokes (one teenage puppet is off backpacking through Indonesia to find her roots) to a wider exploration of how people process disaster in a post 9/11 world. Small, yes, but sharp as a pin – and very, very funny.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
