Cuteness and charm is fashionable in theatre, as my colleague Lyn Gardner recently pointed out. No less so in comedy – this award-winning offering from Aussie storyteller Michael Workman being a fine example. Set in 1960s Cuba, it's about a father separated from his newborn daughter when he criticises Castro in his "widely unread" newspaper column. Exiled in a boat full of cabbages, Augustus sails off to encounter sharks with Venn diagrams, an angel called Keith and a "starmaker" who fashions celestial bodies from bad teenage poetry. If his vessel were pea-green and his cabin-mates an owl and a pussycat, Augustus's tale could scarcely be more fairytale-like.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, save that the show is being performed to an adult audience and billed as comedy. By those lights, it's not altogether satisfying. On the one hand, Workman wants us to be touched by this heartfelt parable of the indomitability of the human spirit. At one point, he mewls a Thom Yorke-alike song (lyrics hard to make out) about our existential loneliness. Throughout, his Michael Nymanish keyboard playing gives the story a lush emotional underpinning.
But the tale itself is thinner than Keith's wings. It is spoken softly, and low on dynamism. Its hero is never more than two-dimensional – literally, given that Workman narrates in doodles as well as words. The narrative is studded with kooky jokes ("his heart was in the right place – which was his left leg, as is standard in an angel"), each of which Workman marks with a self-conscious, Mr Beanish grimace. His redemptive ending is lovely – but easier to admire than feel, because what precedes it seems not so much true as done for winsome effect. There's lots to enjoy here, not least Workman's lyrical turn of phrase. His heart is in the right place – but it's too soft.
