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Wild Bore, Edinburgh Festival review: Cheeky critique of critics will make you laugh like a loon

Meta: Three performers invite the audience to critique their critique of critics
Meta: Three performers invite the audience to critique their critique of critics

Three bare bums, plonked on a trestle table, start “talking” one by one, and we realise they are reading outraged “reviews” of what we are seeing. Yes, it is critics literally talking out of their arses.

Then the owners of those bare bums - feminist performance artists Adrienne Truscott, Ursula Martinez and Zoë Coombs Marr, who have joined forces for this show - turn round to face the audience.

They read out some real reviews (stinkers all), some of others’ shows, some of their solo work - which is avant garde, strikingly original or baffling, according to taste. But I can attest it is never, ever dull.

They are critiquing the critics, while inviting the audience to critique their critique of critics. It’s hugely meta, but what could be “an ironic mess” (as one of their shows was described) is playful and cheeky (ahem), as they talk, dance and do stuff “for no apparent reason” (another review).

The trio never miss a cheap gag - verbal and visual (bottoms are always funny) - and much of the action is utterly daft, and only occasionally self-indulgent. This intelligent riposte to critics makes the crucial point that to see the previously unseen in theatre may challenge some, but that doesn’t invalidate it for the rest.

Wild Bore, which is coming to Soho Theatre in November, tells you more about the relationship between performer and audience than any dry textbook could. And it will make you laugh like a loon.

Until August 27; tickets.edfringe.com