Fringe Review: LITTLE ANIMALS, Studio Theatre at Traverse @ The Lyceum Studio
Photo credit: Chew Boy
Paul Ready is pacing the room as the audience file into the round at the Traverse @ Lyceum Studio. He is corporately clad - a blue suit and gold tie, smart shoes. He welcomes in the audience, saying he didn’t expect anyone and that Richard is dead - not that we knew Richard anyway. After the dust settles on this announcement, Ready tells a story. It is a huge, all-encompassing story of the world, but it is also a smaller story of him and Richard and how their lives intersected. Beautifully told and masterfully written by Ready, he is remarkable in his delivery of this poignant one-man show.
Ready hasn’t been invited to Richard’s funeral, despite being one of his closest friends and throughout his performance of Little Animals searches for a reason why. Delicately, Ready unfolds their differences, tracking moments in their lives from when they were in primary school to teenagers, university students and beyond. Ready is utterly compelling in his breaking of the fourth wall and shifting between characters in conversation as he delves into climate anxiety, how and what a life can mean, and the choices that we make along the way.
What Ready so astutely captures is the desperation of half of a generation watching the world burn, and the ignorance of the others. The ones who long forgot they wanted to be astronauts, and hunt for convenience in their busy lives, managing jobs and spouses, children and mortgages. He is almost haunting in his portrayal of how heavy the world can weigh when others prefer to deal with their own immediate problems first. He considers what it means to achieve, having faith in humanity and what actually matters.
It's the simplicity of Little Animals that allows these ideas the space to breathe. The lights are up, all is laid out bare, only Ready is on the stage. It is this space that becomes cavernous or shrinks to nothing, directed by his words and formidable pacing that carries his storytelling almost on another plane.
His performance deftly blends in and out of Richard’s life searching for answers to purpose, humanity and systems that humans have generated. Ready probes these topics with thought, gravity, and razor-sharp wit. It is a lingering performance that makes you question your place in things, at times feeling uncomfortable as it gently studies how stories get told and what really counts.
Little Animals is a call to arms; an important, imperative force to be reckoned with. Theatre at its best, this show is a must-see this Fringe.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Hannah Goldswain
Little Animals plays at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until 30 Aug, with further info here.