In 2015, boutique, Bristol-based collective the Wardrobe Ensemble won an Edinburgh fringe award for their quirky take on desire and domestic British politics, 1972: The Future of Sex. Last year, they repeated the feat with Education, Education, Education.
The company’s new show, South Western, is as imaginative as their last two, but the company will not venture north for festival season. Despite this, expectations are high: will it be three summer hits in a row? Certainly, South Western is as charming – and impossible to categorise – as their previous shows. Billed as a “spaghetti Western with Cornish pasties”, it’s a tribute to classics such as High Noon and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with some nicely feminist twists. Our lantern-jawed revenger is Mae (Helena Middleton), on a quest to find her father’s murderer. Her jail-breaking accomplice is Anne (Jesse Meadows). Narrating the story (“cut!”, “pan left!”) is Ben Vardy’s bespectacled, drawling film professor. The climactic gunfight is located – naturally – not at the OK Corral, but in a pub somewhere near Land’s End.
Collaboratively created and coloured with plenty of Bristolian in-jokes, South Western is a galloping ride, and offers more diversions than the average weekend on GWR. Physical japes abound; the performers take particular glee in attempting, and not quite succeeding, to emulate the magic of the silver screen, deploying more fake blood than Sergio Leone at his grisliest and rivalling Patrick Barlow’s much-loved adaptation of The 39 Steps for theatrical inventiveness.
Entertaining as it is, the question is what does this show add up to; for all the hectic, multitasking energy, its hour-and-a-half long duration feels somehow too long and too short, and the goal is never quite clear. So imaginative is this company, you sense there’s almost nothing they couldn’t do, if they put their minds to it. Next time, you genuinely hope they will.
• At Tobacco Factory, Bristol, until 27 July.@andydickson
