Greenside @ Infirmary Street

Aug 15-20 : (16.10)

Script:  Stagecraft:   Performance:

It a tough market, the Edinburgh fringe, everyone trying to do something different, to stand out from the ground. Well, this year’s offering from Birmingham’s Blue Orange Theatre has certainly done that. As we take our seats, we are invited into the manic mind of writer obsessively struggling against his deadlines & the creative flow of his book. Intriguingly, wondrously, his characters are clad in in angel white upon the stage, & slowly become parley to the creative processes of the writer… nagging & nit-picking away as they try to reshape & improve their individual lots. In essence, then, Paper In My Pants is a play which offers a fascinating glimpse inside the mind of a writer very much wrestling with his creative demons

Its all a bit like the Shining & a bit like the Numskulls, a comic strip I used to read in my youth, or that recent Pixar animation, Inside Out.But its better, of course, because the characters are deeper, with real-life concerns & conversation. As they manifest themselves outwith the writer’s imaginations & trip through their glitzy chit-chat, I’m like this is really good stuff, & one of the few plays I’d like to see again, just so I can get to grips with the many nuances involved in Paper In My Pants.

.Reviewer : Damian Beeson Bullen