Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

It’s not just at the cinema where you can be entertained by both plastic dolls and the Manhattan Project. Rob Duncan – as previously seen in such bonkers Fringe shows as Legs and Logs – manages to include both elements in his latest absurd offering, although it just appears to be a coincidence; he’s not trying some clever Barbenheimer joke.

In fact, don’t go looking for patterns or links within this absurd one-man prop-driven sketch show. Nor anything clever. For Baby Trains is a handful of peculiar ideas Duncan has had, played out with ridiculous commitment by a man who spends most of the hour with a doll strapped to his waist.

And he gets us to invest in his strange premises too. From the very start, the audience is rooting for a tiny toy train with a baby’s face to make it all the way around a precarious track. Maybe this is a metaphor for the way we hope Duncan will navigate his hour without being derailed, too. But it probably isn’t.

The show can be a bit rickety as the laid-back comic sometimes fumbles for words, or finds the props don’t quite work as expected, but it’s OK as it’s all part of the ramshackle charm. Baby Trains is all about sharing ridiculous ideas, some of which are fully-realised, some of which haven’t quite found their feet.

One of the funniest, and polished, sections has Duncan singing the praises of the Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 industrial printer, which can not only solve all your printing needs – but, with a bit of inventive application and overlooking of reality, solve climate change.

There’s a touch of reality here, as Duncan used to be a printer, while another skit draws on his time as a teacher, perhaps a reminder that mucking about on stage is no training for the practical world.

Still, he can imagine he’s qualified to be a CEO, though the calm head you need in business goes out the window as soon as someone nicks his stapler, and he becomes more than a little demented.

Last year he appeared as Jeremy Segway, the inventor of the two-wheeled personal transportation device that bears his name (no, not ‘Jeremy’) in an even more delightfully bonkers show, and the gizmo makes a brief repeat appearance here. That show had some semblance of structure, but don’t hold any such expectations for Baby Train, which makes a virtue of needing no sensible thread.

Review date: 17 Aug 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: PBH's Free Fringe at Legends