Academic texts have been written about the bond between knights and their steeds in chivalric romances. US clown Madeleine Rowe’s contribution to the field is an hour of whimsical horseplay with psychosexual trappings. Here, it’s the beast that mounts the knight – and rather vigorously, too.
Our host is clad in tunic and spangly chainmail jumpsuit. The hobby horse named Hermes is one of a number of toyshop props including a plastic Excalibur and crown used in daffy episodes of audience participation. Rowe’s script has a “methinks” here and a “prithee” there, the knight’s prophecy and quest unfolding to sweeping Celtic orchestrations across We’re Going on a Bear Hunt-style terrain. You’d be right to assume that sword innuendo is embraced when possible but Rowe also has fun with gender norms and social structures seen through an Arthurian lens.
This knight is consumed by confusion (“Kings can’t do what we’ve done!” he tells Hermes) as he seeks a meekly obedient wife among us and plucks up wedding eve courage to overcome his bilious reaction to consummate the marriage by doing it, gulp, “how humans do it”.
Physical comedy enhances these interactions – the removal of just belt and tunic becomes a drawn out striptease – and Rowe’s vocal work is particularly deft. There’s the gruffness of Adam Riches channelling Sean Bean as a swaggering adventurer (a character Riches is reprising this fringe to read Le Morte d’Arthur). To the mix, Rowe adds mock solemnity as well as a lovely lilt. Single vowels are elongated out of shape, going from gravelly to awestruck to sweetly sentimental.
Rowe’s twinkle-eyed charisma can’t quite conceal the fact that each episode is stretched for too long, the pace occasionally needs to giddy up and it’s a one-note joke, albeit an inspired one. But if this is not the holy grail of fringe comedy, Rowe still gives us a knight to remember.
• At Underbelly, George Square, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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