Mushroomification (Legs, Legs, Legs) @ The Mash House

Following a sold-out run last May, Edinburgh theatre collective Heads on Crooked brings their surreal show Mushroomification (Legs, Legs, Legs) to Fringe audiences. The company is run non-traditionally – with a focus on skill-sharing and collaboration – and this spirit is tangible throughout the play. 

Mushroomification opens on a lonely mushroom, the sole survivor of what sounds like a vicious squirrel attack. Told through delicious, chewy prose and captivating movement, the mushroom's story offers a glimpse into the lives of mushrooms under a hive mind that sounds eerily like human modes of indoctrination. Meanwhile, two scientists bicker over who is in charge of their equal-by-design dynamic. Over the course of the hour, props and bodies come to mean much more than the sum of their parts. 

The mushroom costume, designed by Tilly Bankes, is a centerpiece of the play. The design – set, costumes and props – is a DIY work of pure delight, wrought with ingenuity and handled with care. As the mushroom and scientists, Garrick Pagel, Till Schindler and Tiger Mitchell have dazzling chemistry, fleshing out two colliding worlds in such a short time. With a dash of body horror, Mushroomification could be described as The Substance for mushrooms, or maybe Tetsuo: The Iron Mushroom. 

Mushroomification asks questions that are so much bigger than the scale of a Fringe show in an attic. What does it mean to want a body? What does it mean to be cursed with one? And how much of our wish for "equality" is really a wish to feel in control? Mushroomification demonstrates that, no matter how hard we wish, there is no easy answer. It left me grinning, but with an ache in my chest grieving the oneness that never was.

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Mushroomification (Legs, Legs, Legs), Just the Tonic @ The Mash House (Bottle Room), until 5 Aug, 12.50pm, £8