Fringe review: KIELL SMITH-BYNOE V ED MACARTHUR: STRING V SPITTA, Assembly George Square

It’s Anastasia’s 6th birthday party in Chelsea, and we, the audience, are her friends and guests. Keeping us entertained are two men at polar opposite ends of the children’s entertainer spectrum – Sylvester String, uptight, upper-class, classically-trained and a stickler for discipline, and MC SPITTA, TikTok famous, spontaneous and a dab hand at freestyle rapping.

Quite how these two come to work together is revealed throughout the show, with the aid of flashbacks, a surprising amount of musical numbers, and lots of party fun thrown in for good measure. Audience participation is encouraged, with one brave man even being welcomed on stage to rap himself, but never forced – if you don’t want to join in with the animal noises or “big fish, little fish, cardboard box”, you don’t have to.

This is a show that succeeds thanks to the non-stop performances of its cast, who riff off each other and regularly push each other to the brink of corpsing (much to the audience’s entertainment). Ed MacArthur is wonderfully snooty as String, with absolutely zero self-awareness or understanding of what children would like (one of the games he suggests at one point is ‘Shostakovich or Bust’), and MacArthur also impresses with a crystal clear singing voice and some very skilled piano and accordion playing. Opposite MacArthur, Kiell Smith-Bynoe’s SPITTA is a much more down-to-earth, contemporary figure, doing magic, rapping, and beatboxing with a loop station to great effect. The two have great chemistry, and that’s what really makes this show so fun.

This is a fast-paced, chaotic hour of musical comedy, with some great gags and two powerhouse performances that leave the audience laughing, cheering and dancing along – it felt like we were children again!

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Lorna Murray