Pants on Fire's Pinocchio @ Pleasance Dome

Pants on Fire Theatre have built a reputation over the last few years at the Fringe for highly imaginative re-inventions of classic texts. This year’s offering, a warped 50’s B-movie take on Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio, is no exception.

The puppetry of this production is impressive, the giant Jiminy Cricket and the wooden boy himself are both beautiful creations and their puppeteers bring their wards to life with ease and well-rehearsed precision. The performances of Ben Chamberlain as Pinocchio and Oliver Izod as numerous absurd characters are stand-out and consistently convincing. Amongst the other cast members, however, there are some wavering accents and, whether this was just an ‘off’ performance or not, less than committed performances.

This re-imagining is inventive and colourful, however the world created by Pants on Fire feels somewhat half-realised and over-ambitious. The show is executed with humour and flair but falls a little short of the high standard set by previous productions.