Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

The second of two debut shows that Derek Mitchell is bringing to the Fringe this year, Goblin is a very different proposition to his introductory show Double Dutch (review). 

Certainly not an outright comedy but more of a one-man show with comedic elements, Goblin is a monologue delivered in character by 15-year-old Eliot, a scrawny Midwestern emo boy in the far-off reaches of Decatur, Illinois, in 2007.

Eliot’s beloved older brother died some years earlier, and both his parents are retreating into some combination of mania and depression, one via dieting and the other via conspiracies. The lack of parental oversight leaves Eliot unprotected against the advances of a much older man, a charismatic reality TV star who takes him to Florida, gets them both into meth and starts rebuilding Eliot in his own image.

I suspect that it’s an arc that will feel tragically and hilariously familiar to a small section of the audience. For the rest of us, it stands on its own as a beautifully observed character piece. 

As in Double Dutch, Mitchell displays an incredible facility for transformation: not just transformation into a character but transformation between characters. Eliot is brilliantly realised, replete with a set of mannerisms that are period-accurate to an almost painful degree. There are stray gestures here will bring the early days of the emo rushing back to you like a tidal wave, whether you were part of that scene or not. After going to Florida, Eliot becomes someone very different with a totally altered performance style, but the seeds of the boy are still very much visible in the tree of the man. It’s really impressive stuff.

Throughout, Eliot addresses the audience as 'Goblin', as we play the role of his imaginary friend, and he often gives us a choice of which way to take the narrative. Except, when the choice is between leaving or staying with a man who’s an obvious narcissist, liar and sex trafficker, it’s not much of a choice for most audiences. You feel like you're being given the option just so you can pat yourself on the back for how sensible you'd be if you were in that situation. And yet no matter how we advise him, by design, he never escapes.

 It’s one of a handful of aspects of this show that could have been developed more, but in its own blunt way shows us that in stories like this, choice is an illusion: problems with roots through the decades can’t be solved by an imaginary friend and things were always going to happen this way.

Review date: 4 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Hoots @ Potterow