Charlie Vero-Martin @ Underbelly Cowgate
Picnic is a quirky character hour from Charlie Vero-Martin
Welcome to the wonderful world of Picnic, a multi-character compendium from comic and puppeteer Charlie Vero-Martin. We meet several standalone characters across the hour, including the mysteriously accented and well-researched Professor Flip-Flop, a (purposefully irritating) Aussie fem-fluencer and a man who can’t get enough of cryptic crosswords. Vero-Martin’s character work is fun, but can often feel a little one note.
Despite having a strong aesthetic theme, there’s no real through line for the hour. It all feels surface-level kooky with little substance underneath. This, however, doesn’t matter to the incredibly game audience who enhance the show with quirks from the people amongst it (the lady cry-laughing at every single joke; the woman who adores The Sims and happily wears her diamond-shaped headband as she leaves the room). There’s a joyous sense of community fostered by this audience with Vero-Martin as eagerly enthusiastic ringleader.
Vero-Martin’s onstage energy really carries the show, alongside her sublime puppeteering which we only get a short glimpse of. She creates incredibly cute hermit crabs from cups and washing-up gloves on her picnic bench, alongside a picnic basket which is the star of her posters. Her presence and puppetry makes it feel like she could step into children’s TV at the drop of a hat.
It is particularly odd, then, that as the show culminates in a treasure hunt-like unfolding of clues, Picnic just as quickly and inexplicably descends into Wicker Man-meets-Midsommar chaos. Ending on something with such dissonance makes the hour feel particularly disjointed given the fluffiness of everything that precedes it.
Tonally odd and a little too frothy, Picnic is well crafted enough to still be a hoot with the right people in the room and the boundless energy of Charlie Vero-Martin.
Charlie Vero-Martin: Picnic, Underbelly Cowgate (Delhi Belly), until 27 Aug, 6.55pm, £10-11