Let Dinky Die @ Gilded Balloon

Let Dinky Die: where slapstick marries profundity like never before.

This period war drama combines disco lights and dropkicks (with gunshots worked into the musical score), as Milesi attempts a performance that toes the line between comedy, cabaret and theatre, and somehow manages to transcend all three. His character Dinky is the lone soldier abandoned in a foxhole. The audience is requisitioned into playing new recruits, but it remains unclear whether they are merely figments of survivor-guilt-induced hallucinations.

Milesi doesn’t just fill the stage; he downright claims it, albeit sidestepping dismembered limbs as he does so. There is not a dull moment, whether he is spinning the Susie Q, working himself into a feverish frenzy or fixating on nothingness with a manic squint. Several references are a little too highbrow for those rusty on their WW1 trivia, but they’re cleverly abridged into a tango in the trenches. The show ends by snowballing so rapidly from endearing to chilling, it leaves the wind knocked right out of us.

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Let Dinky Die, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wee Room), 3-29 Aug, 10.45pm, £5-10