Spirit Of Adventure @ Oran Mor

The comic personification of animals on stage is a potentially ill-advised route to take – unless you are Eddie Izzard – but writer Oliver Emanuel’s Spirit Of Adventure does just that, with fine results. A one-man… or should I say one-penguin… monologue with what is initially an amusing premise, the play slowly reveals itself as a kind of anti-travelogue, icy with the grim detail of Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic.

Minimal staging and sound effects which pepper each chapter’s end focus all of the attention on the black-clad Kevin Lennon as The Penguin/Narrator and the bittersweet tang of what quickly becomes an elimination game really bites, emphasising the power struggles within the group of five men, the 'idiocy of humans' battling against an ultimately unwinnable environment.

Lennon is superb, a natural performer with an open face and keen, expressive eyes which dart around in his head like the silver balls in a pinball machine and Robert Paterson’s assured direction of him never falters. “I mean, it’s just walking,” quips The Penguin, ”albeit with three times your own body weight!”

A pithy, sometimes profane script which is subtle and big-hearted, it never goes for big belly laughs or emotional manipulation: more the uncomfortable chuckle accompanying tense moments of human frailty. A bird’s eye view never looked so clear.