Dancer and performer Elliot Minogue-Stone presents pop art, contemporary dance and cabaret in his brand-new mish-mash show, Groovicle at Zoo Southside.
An attractively quirky show that is oddly pleasing
He runs his own tech desk and has perhaps the most laid-back, informal and casual of openings to any show at the Fringe. It’s a style he sustains throughout his performance that sometimes makes it difficult to appreciate that this is actually a show rather than an invitation to just pop round and meet him for a chat and pickle: he opens a fresh jar each day and invites us to partake. It’s an interesting gimmick, but one gets the feeling that biscuits might have gained more partakers.
A series of seemingly unrelated. random scenes take us on a journey or, as he describes it, a ‘search of collective discovery about who we are, what we like and how we co-exist’. Nothing that profound seems to exist but there is a jolly interlude when he sings over the ever-amusing The Laughing Policeman, revising the 1922 Charles Penrose song and choosing people to join him in the chorus of laughter; for a few stirring up fond memories of listening to the the record on the gramophone. Somehow, St Teresa of Ávila is roped into the discourse along with a holdall containing mementos from his life; odd and ends; bits and pieces; Geraldine the puppet and various T-shirts. OK, time for a dance. And he takes to his feet to perform one of a number of routines in contemporary style with hints of classicism that presumably express more of himself, for the show is indeed all about him and verges on the self-indulgent. But that too is a reflection of his life that goes back to compensating for wasted time in his childhood classroom by devising games; to overcoming his stutter by using the language of music and dance to express himself.
The gigs he invented in those early years seem to have flowed into adulthood, where he still relishes putting stuff together in an attractively quirky show that is oddly pleasing. And don’t forget, as he points out, that to add to his credibility he is the son of the ‘comedy legend’ Ian Stone who also has a show here this year.