DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! @ Underbelly Cowgate
Amando Houser's sideways glance at the witch hunt on trans rights is a classic piece of clowning mayhem
We hear them before we see them. High-pitched screaming pipes up from the back of the seating in the Iron Belly; here's a figure in a raggedy velvet dress, clutching a handbag, complete with green face and beetling black brows. Poor little witch DeliaDelia is under a curse and wants to be a real human girl in performer Amando Houser's sideways glance at the 'witch hunt' on trans rights in the United States.
It's apt that the screaming warble is our first introduction to DeliaDelia – if voice is a gender 'tell', and the site of some ambivalence, the witch's warble allows Houser to map out a new aural zone. The absurd, ugly freedom of the sound is contagious: when one audience member comes up to play the part of DeliaDelia's new best friend, she involuntarily responds in the same screaming sing-song.
DeliaDelia is in hot pursuit of a boyfriend and works their way through several young men in the audience, their attempts at seduction a queasy combination of naivety and total gross-out. The fusty, respectable handbag is a clever touch, comically tempering the lascivious tongue waggling and suggestive wand work. Rather like Anna Marie Simonsen and Marie Kallevik Straume's Troll last year, Houser uses a liminal, magical figure to forge a sweet and nasty creation, where the usual rules don't apply.
At one point, DeliaDelia is caught short, her stomach emitting monstrous gurgling noises. Where to go when there are no bathrooms for them? Their eyes alight on the cauldron in the middle of the stage, and they look at the audience, with an expression that is both piteous and menacing. Will they, won't they? They will.
The hysteria around bathrooms and the prohibitions against trans people in sport – these things are all in the mix here, along with gloopy eyeballs and rubber ears. It makes for an electric atmosphere and a classic piece of Fringe mayhem.
DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch!, Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly), until 24 Aug, 11.10pm, £8-12