Is it comedy, or a spirited child let loose on a dressing-up box? In Elf Lyons’ Swan, it is not always easy to tell. The show – a one-woman-plus-puppets rehash of Swan Lake – is almost aggressively winsome. A graduate of Philippe Gaulier’s clown school, Lyons delivers it all in wide-eyed Franglais, while dressed in a party-shop parrot costume. “Quoi?” as she might say. “Quoi not?” You could parse the show for satire on the gender politics of ballet, or for its supposed insights into Lyons’ mental health (“I’m on Prozac!”). But in fact this is dottiness for the sake of celebratory dottiness, an hour of our time (and many more of hers) dedicated to complete nonsense – which Lyons just about justifies.
Lyons is open about the daftness of the undertaking, admitting that the garbled sub-French might be a bad idea, sending up the shabbiness of this prop or that mistimed cue. The evil Von Rothbart is played by Lyons dressed as a shark. The Queen is a suitcase talking through a flapping zippered mouth. The fellow swans of tragic heroine Odette (“Très belle but un petit peu of a plank”) are mops waggled by the audience.
It’s a kind of tightrope walk, whereby Lyons’ charm alone prevents us looking down to the vast emptiness beneath. Yes, there’s some fun to be had with ballet convention; the male characters are forever lifting her female characters and plonking them unceremoniously downstage. And there is a running joke in which Elf keeps being reminded of her relationship with her mum. (I preferred her ex-girlfriend Juliette, a haughty French caricature reincarnated as the scheming black swan, Odile.) More often, it’s the silly set pieces that sustain Swan: a sultry faux-striptease of disgorged bras and fairy lights; glances exchanged between Lyons and a crocodile hand-puppet to a soundtrack of Jacques Brel.
I’m not sure how much the Franglais helps. It signals Lyons’ commitments to her singular ideas, but it also restricts the range of expression available to her. The show can never be other than quirky and cute. Some have found that cuteness hard to stomach, and I sympathise. But as Lyons says: “If you don’t find me funny, you have to admit I’d make an amazing imaginary friend.” On that point, she’s right. I didn’t find Swan laugh-a-minute, but an hour in her company is certainly a memorable way to pass the time.
• At Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh, until 28 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
