Adapted from the self-animated YouTube series of the same name, Terry Saunders' new Edinburgh show charts the fortunes and misfortunes of three couples through animation and storytelling. Mike Stephenson is amused and delighted.
London is a great place for jamming. It's where comedians go to riff out their jingles and their unfinished symphonies, to chop and change and rearrange their acts, like distracted gardeners tending to a rockery in the spring. If London is the place for jams and rare bootlegs and impromptu solos, make no mistake, Edinburgh is the place for your feature length magnum opus. If you're going to the festival you'd better have a steadfast direction and a mission statement. Terry Saunders certainly does. He seems to know exactly why he was put on this earth (at least for this year) - to explore, revere and indeed illustrate the subtle yet all too familiar complexities of the heart.
He looks at first like a rather guarded type, hidden behind his thick-rim beardy, beany hat look, and with a subdued, almost deadpan delivery. Peaceful but not too friendly, clear but not patronising. All of this is belied by his refreshingly crisp and crystalline talent for concisely framing the unyielding relationship issues that dog us and each other to no end. His piece for this year's fringe Six and a Half Loves follows his series of bleak but beautiful animation shorts of the same name (the precursors to which are available on the internet and can't be recommended highly enough.) It's certainly nice to get such polished visual accompaniments to comedy, especially ones so lovingly laboured over by your host.
His animation style is irresistibly gripping in its smooth transitions and cheeky visual narratives, drawn with a child-like simplicity that couldn't be more suited to the subject matter. He charts the adventures and tribulations of this modern mutation of love as it flounders awkwardly between distant close friends, inflames in vain through the nostalgic hearts of ex-lovers, and tragically yet inevitably atrophies between once stone-solid long term partners. It sounds depressing but it's too real to be cynical and far too cute to be at all disheartening. I'm not sure to what degree any of it is autobiographical or based to some degree on actual persons, but either way the characters are so humanely vulnerable and sweet that you would have to be a heartless underground creature not to recognise the tragedies in some way and be deeply moved.
This is a world into which comedians rarely dare to enter. The whimsy of the universal micro-tragedy is generally left up to jerky soap operas and sugary rom-coms to play with, leaving comedians to scoff sarcastically at the very idea. But Terry boldly goes there, and shows a sympathetic yet brutally down-to-earth honesty that you will seldom get from one who is also so funny. It's funny because it's true, and you'll often hear it said. But that's not the full story. The full story is, it's funny because it's tragic and it's tragic because it's true. Keep that in mind at all times.
Oh yes, don't worry, he also has jokes. Very funny ones.
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