Brighton Fringe review

The blurb promises ‘truly bewildering comedy performance art’ – and the emphasis should definitely lie on the ‘bewildering’ part.

Hannah Winter’s one-woman show greys the line between pretentious drama-as-therapy and parodying it – leaving the audience gently bemused.

There are nervous laughs from the discomfort of not quite know what’s going on at the start, especially with clumsy audience participation – that technique so beloved of the Philippe Gaulier school.

And we have to take it on trust those very melodramatic mimes she so forcefully acts out are supposed to mock overblown performance art, given that it looks and sound so very much like the real thing. She intones seriously about the ‘fulness of emptiness’ – or was it the other way around? – leaving us to figure out if it’s deep and meaningful or not.

If there are tones of flippancy, they don’t sit well on the serious foundation of Snowflake, which soon turns out to be all about how people – well, her –  respond when past traumas are triggered.

On the all-white stage, we are introduced to manifestations of her demanding dad and physically abusive mum – both of whom have their own heavy emotional baggage to carry – and this tragi-comic clowning doesn’t seem the best way to address it all these complexities. And that’s before she brings up rape and drowned migrants.

Winter is an engaging performer who has some good ideas, such as playing out her relationship with her tech like a dysfunctional marriage falling apart. But this tonally erratic piece is a muddle, hard to engage with and even harder to love beyond being one of those WTF? shows that make the fringe festival circuit so odd.

Review date: 30 May 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett