What connects plastic penguins and the floundering middle class? Straight men and empty bottles of Gatorade? Melania Trump and the crumpled foil of a Ferrero Rocher? Julio Torres is here and he is very eager to show you. In his first solo show My Favourite Shapes, Torres surveys the audience cautiously from behind a wooden desk. An iPhone camera is hooked up to a projector which shows us his hands as he introduces us to a distinguished line-up of guests: glass prisms, diamante brooches and tiny furniture fit for fleas – all with a story to tell.
A genuine box of curiosities: clever, poignant and always surprising, the audience revels in watching this comedic prodigy tick.
A quietly endearing presence, Torres is soft spoken, his cheeks delicately streaked with glitter, a sort of cross between a precocious child and the indie boyfriend we all wanted in 2009. Indeed, the format of the show is essentially a glorified show-and-tell: Torres invites us into his world using his collection of oddities as a springboard for observations on everything, from emojis to Donald Duck. Whirling off on wild tangents we are taken on a fanciful comedy journey, told variously through play scripts, diary entries and mechanical children’s toys.
But there is no surreality without substance here, each setup is deftly calculated, Torres’ razor-sharp delivery making the surreal feel intimately familiar as he guides us to punchline after punchline. My Favourite Shapes is a genuine box of curiosities: clever, poignant and always surprising, the audience revels in watching this comedic prodigy tick. This is a show created in the true spirit of play and imagination, and something quite unlike anything else you will see this Fringe.
