Gentlemen of Leisure review

Oi! You! You like books? Are books your thing, eh? Read a book before? Know what one is? Well, to be honest, if reading isn't your thing then you might as well look for something else to fill your afternoon Fringe slot.

Blunt, eh? The fact remains that sitting down in a cave while a man cries on-stage is an un-nerving way to start a show. The interior of the cave in which the show is set gives the opening few moments of the show a real sense of the macabre.

In actual fact, that element of the macabre is merely atmospheric but it is distinctly possible that the show might lose something if it were to be performed in a club or, as the tone of the show would suggest, a lecture theatre.

Structured as a whimsical waltz through the death(?) of the novel the Gentlemen Of Leisure take the audience to a series of unlikely locales including a rain-soaked moor and an Australian self-help seminar.

While some jokes in the show never quite land and a deliberate amount of over-acting can become wearying, the Gentlemen of Leisure manage to hit some incredible highs in a show which never questions the novel as a concept but instead celebrates its contribution to our lives and the really weird people that novels spawn.

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The Gentlemen of Leisure Present: The Death of the Novel listing