2016 Malcolm Hardee Award-winner for Comic Originality – dare you enter the Twonkeyverse?
One of the Fringe’s most reliably unusual auteurs returns with a new adventure from the peculiar world of Mr Twonkey. Perfectly timed to cash in on the lucrative Summer Christmas market, Twonkey’s ninth Fringe outing features new songs, gentle dancing, puppets, games, costume changes, unlikely props and live present wrapping – cabaret comedy at its most determinedly unpredictable.
Twonkey’s conniving manager Mr. Pines has sent him to the Iquitos
Fringe deep in the Hallucinogenic Peruvian jungle over Christmas – will he survive? And can he arrange a festive celebration that’s just the way he wants it? Chris Hutchinson, his long-suffering weak Lion, is sent on a dangerous quest to find the chicken church. The troubled Duck, Sandy, finds himself in a pickle after a spot of glass-eating reveals a mysterious family tradition. Once the cogs of fate start to turn all is not as it seems, and soon Mr. Pines finds himself running Pings Pinny; a bakery in old Shanghai. Meanwhile Twonkey and his crew have a high flying escape in their sights.
The Christmas pudding spider, a cannibalistic Santa, Transylvanian
finger fantasy and much more awaits you in the jungle. Imagine if Malcolm McLaren had directed Rupert the Bear, drunk, making it into an oddball curiosity set in a haunted theme park and you’re somewhere close.
Twonkey is Paul Vickers. As frontman of cult rock act Dawn of the
Replicants he has released five studio albums, recorded five BBC Radio One John Peel sessions and played Glastonbury, Reading, T in the Park and SXSW in Austin Texas.
In 1997, D.O.T.R were named Most Promising New Act by The Times, and in 1998 they were nominated for an N.M.E. Brat Award.
Since these heady days, Paul has continued making music with new project Paul Vickers and The Leg, to critical acclaim and national and local radio play. In 2009, he branched out into cabaret, with shows at the Edinburgh and Brighton Fringes. Paul went on to create the Twonkeyverse, and from 2010’s Twonkey’s Cottage to last year’s award-winning Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel Paul has taken shows to each year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival to four and five star reviews.
In 2013, Twonkey was a Time Out & Soho Theatre Award nominee, resulting in a performance at London’s Soho Theatre. Paul’s writing includes a book, Itchy Grumble (2013), and a play, Jennifer’s Robot Arm (2015).
Twonkey’s Christmas in the Jungle: 3 – 27 August (not 15), Heroes @ Dragonfly (Venue 414) – 52 West Port, EH1 2LD.
Buy a £5 ticket in advance to guarantee entry or Pay What You Want at the venue
